Luke's Blog

NEC Report – 26 March 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2024年3月28日 16:00:00 +0000

The first substantive item at the full NEC meeting on 26 March was David Evans’ report as General Secretary. David said he was disappointed that the General Election had not been called for 2^nd May as the staff were all ready to fight it. Now the local elections and General Election would be fought sequentially. There was a live possibility that Sunak would lose control of the Tory party and be forced into a June or July election to forestall a leadership challenge. Tory digital and print spent had increased immensely, showing they had been ready for a May election, but bottled it. Restrictions on staff leave were being kept in place so that we remained on an election footing. The internal task forces had completed that General Election budgets and staffing registers for the short campaign.

David said we were now fighting local election and a parliamentary byelection in Blackpool South on 2^nd May. There were three very tough mayoral contests in East Midlands, West Midlands and Tees Valley. The new HQ had been refurbished and six of the regional parties had moved into new or refurbished premises. Labour Central, the party’s back office hub in Newcastle, had also been refurbished. Fundraising was going well, with 30% of members donating in addition to their membership fees. David commended Teddy Ryan, the South East Regional Director, who had been so successful in raising donations from businesses that he was subsidising other regions. The Party’s lottery was now raising 300,000ドル a year. CLPs and Regions have been given QR codes enabling them to keep half the income from each lottery ticket they sell. Membership was now 366,604, of whom a historically low proportion, 11,713, were in arrears.

David said there were increasing concerns about the security of elected members, staff, members and volunteers, and he had met all the relevant government agencies. He was pushing them to remove and distinction between the protection MPs get when they are engaged in parliamentary business and when they are engaged in party business, as the threat level is the same. There had also been cyber attacks by foreign state actors and individuals, so information security was a high priority. Unfortunately, different police forces take different stances on MP and councillor security. We want national standards applied and in the short campaign each party has a senior police officer attached to them enabling us to escalate concerns very quickly.

In the Q&A I said that communication with CLPs and unsuccessful candidates in the non-battleground selections had not been satisfactory and had detracted from the selection of excellent and diverse candidates. David committed to improving communications with both candidates and CLPs about the remaining selections.

He said that publicity making claims about abuse of the Anonyvoter system used for online voting in selections was "fake news" and completely misplaced and misdirected, and that nothing that had happened in the Croydon East selection related to Anonyvoter.

He responded affirmatively to a request from Gurinder Josan to support Muslim stakeholders engaging with their communities following the Gaza war.

He agreed to change the deadline date for contemporary motions to Women’s Conference so that meetings to pass motions could happen at a reasonable time during the year.

He said Labour would take a tough line on any Labour MP accepting donations from Owen Jones’ "We Deserve Better" initiative, as this was also funding Green and independent candidates.

He said that in Government we would change the remit of the Electoral Commission to focus it on enfranchising the maximum number of voters, whereas the Tories had tried to supress turnout with the new ID requirements and rule on needing National Insurance numbers on postal vote applications.

Next, Deputy National Campaign Coordinator Ellie Reeves MP reported on the local election campaign. She said the Government was at the mercy of events as there was continuous leadership challenge speculation. The Budget had not moved the Labour poll lead. The Tories were putting party before country with the fiscal irresponsibility of their 46ドル billion in tax cut promises. Their Rwanda deportations policy was now centre stage and was under scrutiny over cost and effectiveness. They could lose control of the General Election date, so we have to be ready to fight one at any time. The four pillars of our campaign were that the country needs change, the Tories have failed, Keir has changed Labour, and we have a plan for long term change.

Ellie said we would treat the three key mayoral contests like byelections. There was a political lead in each one: Steve McCabe MP in West Midlands, Lord (Vernon) Coaker in East Midlands, and Julie Elliott MP in Tees Valley. There were also target councils we were directing activists to via www.events.labour.org.uk. MPs were being asked to make three campaign visits to these battlegrounds during the recess and two more after that.

We had launched a new site for sharing social media content: www.social.labour.org.uk.

Morgan McSweeney reported as Elections Director. He said Council Tax was up because the Tory government had systematically under-funded social care. We had been ready for a 2^nd May General Election and would remind voters of the change they could have had if the Tories had not bottled it. We had strong policies to offer around growth, devolution, the NHS (especially access to GPs and dentists), and law and order. We would apply our national policy missions to local council areas, particularly in those parliamentary battleground seats that are in the three key mayoral areas. These would be challenging to win as the East Midlands one was a new mayoralty and the Tory incumbents in West Midlands and Tees Valley were running on a narrative of opposition to their own government! This was the smallest set of council seats up for election in each four year cycle. A plurality of them were already Labour. We had already maxed out gains in many of these areas. The incumbent Government usually gains council seats in a General Election year. The Tories are only defending 800 council seats. Because of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections, every voter in England and Wales has a vote. The Tories have changed the goalposts by increasing spending limits and changing the mayoral electoral system to First Past the Post. Sunak is saying these elections are about sending a message to Labour, but councils are going bust because of national government funding cuts. There is no read across from Ben Houchen and Andy Street’s personal votes as mayors to what might happen in a General Election.

As I am the NEC link member to Labour International, our CLP for overseas members, I asked about measures that could be taken to secure more votes from overseas voters, many of whom are newly re-enfranchised. Ellie said that our most powerful tool in this regard was asking our members to remind relatives living overseas to register. The focus needed to be on those who were entitled to register in marginal constituencies. Morgan said that frontbenchers could reach overseas voters through appearances in expat specific media.

Morgan said that the London Mayor and Assembly contest did not require as much central support as the three previously mentioned because the London CLPs have such large and active memberships. In contrast, additional funding, digital effort and staffing were going into Scotland, which has historically had smaller membership CLPs.

He said within the battleground seats there was a focus of resources on the core battleground, the seats which were neither easier to gain nor the most stretching targets, but that would give us a working majority.

Keir Starmer then gave his Leader’s report. He reiterated that the organisation had been ready for a 2^nd May General Election, but this was still a really important set of elections. We had to keep focused and keep the momentum going, as a one or two seat parliamentary majority requires a bigger swing than Labour got in 1997. We must avoid complacency due to the large poll leads as that would drive down turnout. He had attended Sadiq Khan’s campaign launch and had campaigned with the new First Minister Vaughan Gething in North Wales. Vaughan’s election was a historic moment, the first black leader of any government in Europe. It would be amazing to have a Labour Government in Westminster working with the devolved administrations, not holding them back. Keir thanked Mark Drakeford for his years of service, especially during the pandemic. He repeated the need to keep focused and disciplined through to 2^nd May and then through the summer.

In the Q&A, Keir said there would be an anti-poverty strategy from day one of a Labour Government.

On the Gaza UN Security Council vote, he said the US and Israel now had different public positions. This reinforces Labour’s decision to call for an immediate ceasefire. Our motion in the last parliamentary debate had been proven to be the correct policy stance. There are one million civilians in Rafah, they need a ceasefire, the hostages need to be got out, and aid needs to go in, and there needs to be a foot in the door for a political process for a two state solution. It would be a Labour Government’s solemn duty to drive the two state agenda politically. But the fact that fighting is still going on despite the UNSC vote shows that just calling for a ceasefire doesn’t make one happen.

Keir said he was committed to the New Deal for Working People and dignity at work. Good terms and conditions led to higher productivity, so this was part of our strategy for building a stronger economy. He had told the TUC Labour was pro-business and he had told business conferences that we were pro-union and would bring in the New Deal.

On house building, he said the plight of young people, paying a fortune in rent or stuck with their parents as mortgages were unaffordable, was appalling, and a commitment to house building was a key dividing line with other parties.

He said he was against fire and rehire, wherever it is, including if the employer is a Labour council.

He said Sunak cannot put himself in the shoes of people who are struggling, and the fact the Tories are leaving the country worse than they found it is unforgivable.

He said Frank Hester’s abusive comments about Diane Abbott were racist and misogynistic and it was shocking that Sunak had sent ministers out to argue they weren’t. Diane had suffered abuse for decades and she was a trailblazer as the first black woman MP. However, there was a separate process about Diane’s own remarks in the letter to the Observer. He could not comment on individual disciplinary cases as that would be going down the slippery slope that had led his predecessor to the EHRC Report. But there are reasons why some cases take a long time. There has to be a formal fact-finding investigation. Then a chance for the person accused of breaking the rules to respond. They don’t always play ball within the time frame and you can’t move on until they do. In most cases, once it has been established that something wrong happened, and a sanction has been determined, there is then a decision to be taken before the whip is restored to establish what the person needs to do to come back into being a Labour MP, e.g. an apology, or training, or accepting the findings. Individuals sometimes don’t cooperate with these requirements.

Votes for the Greens, Lib Dems and smaller parties help the Tories and make it more difficult for Labour to remove the Tory government. The Greens would not take the country forward. There was a straight choice between a transformative Labour Government or rewarding the Tories for 14 years of failure with another 5 years in power.

We then received a report on the Bernie Grant Leadership Programme, which was about nurturing Black talent in the party. 30 participants had been chosen from 528 applications. It was a bespoke programme with a lot of resource and staff time put into it. The next cohort would have a wider BAME profile, rather than being specifically Black.

We approved a new code of conduct on disablism. As a disabled member, I thanked Disabled Rep on the NEC Ellen Morrison for her hard work with staff to bring forward this important set of protections.

Angela Rayner then gave her Deputy Leader’s report. She thanked Mark Drakeford and commented on Vaughan Gething’s election. She commended our incumbent mayors for their work on policy areas such as bringing buses back into public control, and tackling violence against women and girls, and challenged us to imagine how much more could be done if the mayors were working hand-in-hand with a Labour government. She was launching a plan to tackle regional inequality and highlighted how the Tories had changed funding formulas to take money away from the most deprived local authorities and give it to the most affluent. She said Michael Gove’s proposals around counter-extremism needed very careful scrutiny as they might have unintended consequences. The New Deal for Working People was creating headlines and it was important to note that it was polling incredibly well. Angela said she, Keir and Rachel were pro-worker and pro-business, the two go hand in hand. The New Deal will be central to our economic mission. In the Q&A I commended Angela on the dignified way she had dealt with abusive comments and a very invasive book by Lord Ashcroft, and said she had the whole NEC’s solidarity.

Finally, we considered the BAME Labour development plan. A major finding of the Forde Report was the need to get BAME Labour back on its feet, as it has been moribund since 2018 and so the party has lacked an effective BAME affiliate. There had been problems getting membership and financial records, so it was proposed to appoint an interim committee which would get BAME Labour back on a stable governance footing, get it campaign-ready for the General Election, and organise an AGM. Unfortunately, it was not possible to agree this at the meeting, as colleagues from the trade unions wanted a period of consultation, so there was a vote by 13 to 10 to defer the paper until the May NEC. I was one of the 10 who voted to move forward immediately.

NEC Report – 23 January 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2024年1月24日 15:25:00 +0000

The NEC meeting on 23 January began with obituaries and eulogies for Derek Draper, Glenys Kinnock, Tony Lloyd and Alan Rogers.

Our first substantive item was to conclude the NEC’s work on the Forde Report by receiving a final paper on progress on its implementation from Vidhya Alakeson, Director of External Relations.

This report noted that 154 of Forde’s 165 recommendations have been completed, and only 11 had been considered but would not be being progressed.

Activity noted included:

· Roll-out of the enhanced Member’s Pledge and Leadership Code of Conduct about acceptable behaviour

· Development of an Afrophobia and anti-Black racism training module, with training by Patrick Vernon OBE, Marta Cuffy and the Diversity Trust

· New employee code of conduct and social media policy

· Changes to recruitment and management of staff

Anneliese Dodds MP said that the key was to focus on cultural change and make sure that became fully embedded.

Ann Black noted that adversarial motions about sensitive topics can make meetings unwelcoming and asked for there to be time limits on disciplinary procedures.

Abdi Duale said there was still not a forum for BAME members to organise in as BAME Labour had been moribund since 2017.

Johanna Baxter said one member’s vigorous discussion can be another member’s nightmare meeting they never want to come back to.

Angela Eagle MP said that there was too much history in the party of factional abuse about people’s personal characteristics to drive them out of activity and making meetings long and unpleasant to gain control of them and shrink the number of people prepared to turn up.

Keir was unable to be present to give a Leader’s Report as he needed to be in the Commons for a statement about the Middle East and tributes to Tony Lloyd.

David Evans began his report as General Secretary by showing us a new video commemorating 100 years since the first Labour Government: https://x.com/LabourTraining/status/1749707717713813553?s=20

He said there had been some immense results in the five byelections in 2023 but they had put huge pressure on the organisation. They had been used to learn, develop, innovate and test campaign techniques for the General Election.

The party was now campaigning in a holistic way, bringing together field, comms and digital.

There would be a big push on mobilising members to campaign.

We now have two more byelections we must win on 15 February in Kingswood and Wellingborough. The latter is particularly tough. Further byelections are down the track in Rochdale and Blackpool South.

The nature of the General Election will be extremely volatile, very expensive as the Tories have almost doubled the national spending limit, and with fragmented media consumption.

As well as the now 100 trainee organisers and digital trainees, the party has a new media monitoring operation, a new attack and rebuttal unit and is now physically in a new HQ. An opinion poll of the general public we had commissioned had shown 10% of them would do something to help us win the election if we ask them to.

We have to be on a General Election footing for a 2 May Polling Day and be ruthlessly focused as we need a 12% swing to win, which is without precedent, and we need to exceed our national swing in the battleground seats.

A staff survey had shown the staff fully understand our mission and goals, and 500 staff had attended an Away Day last week about the election campaign. The key presentation from this would be rolled out across the party so that members understand our basic strategy. Residentials for candidates and key activists from battleground seats were being held in every region.

180 candidates in battleground seats had been selected, with almost 50% women, despite not legally being able to use All Women Shortlists. The 211 non-battleground seat selections were being fast-tracked.

The majority of regions and nations have moved or are about to move to improved new premises.

We want Annual Conference 2024 to exceed 2023’s on income, attendance and political impact.

Our brilliant fundraising team is breaking all previous records and the new lottery we are running is already bringing in 250,000ドル a year.

Membership is now 390,000 of whom 14,000 are in arrears and 2,868 joined since 1 January (a higher rate of joining than in 2023). A membership surge is anticipated as we get nearer to the General Election.

We are looking at the most effective way of registering overseas voters who have been abroad for more than 15 years, as they are now newly enfranchised and vote where they last lived in the UK.

The single most effective way we can increase turnout is by getting our supporters to sign up for a postal vote. New regulations mean that the application form requires the voter’s national insurance number and therefore must be returned to the Electoral Registration Officer in a sealed envelope.

David pledged to meet the new Young Labour committee when they are elected.

Ellie Reeves MP, Deputy National Campaign Co-ordinator, gave a General Election update. She stressed we can’t take our eye off the target seat strategy and urged everyone to participate in national campaign weekends. She detailed who the MPs are that are "political leads" on the campaign in each region and nation. She unveiled refreshed new branding which is available as templates for leaflets and online materials on "Connects" and the print package options for the short campaign being offered to incumbent MPs.

Morgan McSweeney reported as Elections Director. He said that a 2 May General Election was exactly 100 days away. Opinion polls can move very quickly. Do not underestimate the chaos inside the Tory party, which is broken and divided. The PM may not be in control of events and may have to call an election to pre-empt a leadership challenge.

The Tories have been changing many election rules and the evidence all points to a 2 May Polling Day. They have timed Budget Day for early March not the usual late March. They have increased their digital spend, speeded up their candidate selections and cancelled the Lords Recess so they can get the Rwanda Bill through. They brought forward the National Insurance cut from April to January at a cost to the Treasury of 2ドル.6 billion. They have not given up – they are pumping direct mails and leaflets into their 80 defensive marginals. They will use Labour’s big poll lead to try to turn the election into a referendum about Labour, rather than about their record in government.

Our messaging is clear:

1) It’s time for a change

2) The Tories have failed for 14 years and can’t be allowed to claim Sunak is a fresh start

3) Keir has changed Labour

4) We have a long-term plan to change the country

We have to gain about 1⁄4 of all the seats in the Commons to win a working majority, but physically we can’t have the same level of resource in that many seats, so decisions are being made on which smaller subset of those seats to put the most resource into based on data and intelligence. Targeting is a zero-sum game due to spending limits and finite resources. We are being transparent with battleground candidates about how much support they can expect so they can plan accordingly.

The Kingswood and Wellingborough byelections are both challenging in different ways. Because Kingswood is being abolished in the boundary review, only part of the seat was previously being worked as a battleground. Wellingborough is very challenging politically, the percentage of the electorate who signed the recall petition was only 11%, far below Rutherglen’s.

If the May local elections go ahead without a simultaneous General Election, the Mayoral contests will get a lot of attention. All of them have battleground parliamentary seats in them, but that is particularly the case in the new East Midlands and Tees Valley ones and the West Midlands. Tees Valley requires a massive swing.

26 March is the last day on which a 2 May General Election can be called and the likely date for calling it would be 17 or 18 March.

Reform are polling very high, mostly from 2019 Tory voters, but Tory MPs will try to squeeze the Reform vote with right-wing rhetoric.

Tom Lillywhite, Director of Digital, gave a detailed report on Labour’s digital campaigning, highlighting the excellent work being done by the new digital trainees. He showed us examples of videos being made in vertical framing for sharing on phones for all battleground candidates, featuring both the candidates and the real voices of swing voters. A Digital Skills Academy was training all field organisers to be content creators. We are transforming our organising and mobilisation technology.

The meeting ended with Angela Rayner’s report as Deputy Leader. She paid tribute to Tony Lloyd and then went on to talk through the big issues that Parliament had been dealing with. On Gaza, she reiterated Labour’s support for a sustainable ceasefire, the release of all the Israeli hostages, and a two state solution. Keir had not been informed in advance of the most recent airstrikes on the Houthis but had subsequently been briefed on Privy Council terms. There was an Opposition Day Debate on Tata Steel. Labour’s Crime Week would focus on knife crime and the cuts to youth services. Health Week last week had focused on NHS dentistry. Local government was facing immense financial pressures and Labour had a long-term funding plan for it. Angela concluded with a passionate call for Labour to be united and disciplined in comparison with Tory infighting.

NEC Report – 28 November 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年11月29日 19:19:00 +0000

The November NEC meeting is always the Away Day, a more strategic meeting that looks at the year ahead. We met this time in at Labour Central, the party’s back-office hub in Newcastle upon Tyne. On the day previous to the meeting I was one of a number of NEC members to go canvassing for Sam Rushworth, Labour’s candidate in the target marginal seat of Bishop Auckland.

There are a number of business items that have to be signed off at the start of the Away Day, so we began the day by rattling through those: the NEC Aims and Objectives, terms of reference for and membership of all our committees and sub-committees, and dates for all our meetings in 2024.

Angela Eagle reported as Chair of Equalities that the proposed relaunch of BAME Labour was on a pathway to happening now that various constitutional issues had been resolved.

I asked about the panel reviewing our position on standing candidates in Northern Ireland (we have a legal commitment to review this once in every parliament) and was told it would report early in the New Year.

Gurinder Singh Josan proposed that coopted representatives on the Equalities Committee should only be from affiliated socialist societies, not campaigns and groups that are not formally affiliated to the party. This was agreed, but with the proviso that it would not affect groups already invited to the meetings.

A timetable for elections to the Labour Students and Young Labour National Committees was agreed. Nominations will open this Friday, 1 December. Nominations will close on Friday 23 February. The ballots will run from 7 March to 29 March. CLPs and Young Labour branches can nominate for the Young Labour committee, whereas nominations in Labour Students are made by individuals who have registered as students with the party and verified their student status. The final date for students to join, pay off arrears and register their student status to participate in the ballot is Friday 15 December.

This is a different timetable to the one for all the other national ballots (CLP reps on NEC, NPF, etc) which was signed off at the Organisation Committee. For the main set of ballots nominations open on 12 January and close at 11.59 on Friday 28 June. These are also the dates for the opening and closing of registration for Annual Conference delegates.

Annual Conference will be held from Sunday 22 September to Wednesday 25

September 2024, with the deadline for contemporary motions being 5pm on Thursday 12 September and for emergency motions being 12 noon on Friday 20 September.

It was agreed that, because it was a General Election year, the 2024 National Women’s Conference would follow the same format as 2023, a one-day conference on the Saturday before (21 September) and using the same venue as Annual Conference in Liverpool. After discussion, it was agreed not to make any recommendation to the Women’s Conference Arrangements Committee about the number of motion topics the National Women’s Conference could debate. It was agreed to consult the National Women’s Committee, Women’s Conference Arrangements Committee and women in the party more widely about whether they preferred a separate two-day conference or to continue the current arrangement in 2025 and subsequent years.

After this initial business we spent the rest of the day hearing detailed presentations from key staff about the General Election.

General Secretary David Evans said we had made big organisational changes to be election-ready and there was no complacency about the challenge.

Deputy National Campaign Co-ordinator Ellie Reeves MP said she believed the Tories were in the process of changing strategy to a "better the devil you know" theme from an earlier attempt to frame Rishi Sunak as a change candidate. They want to make the election a referendum on Labour rather than a referendum on their performance in government. They will try to deny Labour has changed.

Ellie said the by-election results recently had been brilliant, including in Mid Beds where there had been an attempt to say Labour could not win and that we should leave it to the Lib Dems. A highly visible garden poster campaign had helped show we were competitive. Each byelection took up an incredible amount of our resources but provided invaluable training opportunities for staff and activists. The results have sown doubt and division among the Tories. They don’t however predict the future, and there is still a huge task for Labour.

Our themes are that:

· It is time for change.

· The Tories have failed and will fail again.

· Keir has changed Labour.

· We have a long-term plan for the country.

We have a strong, funded policy offer based on:

· Fiscal stability thanks to our fiscal rules

· 700,000 extra dental appointments in the areas of greatest need, and 2 million extra NHS procedures and operations.

· Our five-point plan to tackle crime and shoplifting.

· Breakfast clubs in every primary school.

· Setting up GB Energy.

· The New Deal for Working People, including the bans on zero hours contracts and fire and rehire.

· 1.5 million new homes built over the course of the next parliament.

The Tories will argue change means risk, so we need to provide reassurance to voters that the change we are offering is one they can trust. They will try to rehabilitate their record, so we need to remind voters how awful they have been as a government, and the threat they pose if re-elected. They will deny Labour has changed, so we need to be disciplined, particularly on our fiscal rules. They will try to make the election a referendum on Labour, so we need to bulletproof our policy offer and avoid making ourselves the focus of the election.

We need to remind voters that:

· The Tories crashed the economy, and you are paying the price through higher mortgage interest rates.

· Taxes have gone up 25 times, you can’t trust the Tories on tax.

· The Tories crashed the NHS, there are record waiting lists.

· They have caused political chaos – 5 PMs, 7 Chancellors, 15 housing ministers.

· Crimes are not prosecuted, and prisoners released because there are not enough prison places.

· If they win again, they will just carry on the same way.

Keir is:

· A professional, serious leader.

· He puts the country first.

· Strong – he tackled antisemitism, changed the party, and is strong on defence.

· Former prosecutor-in-chief.

· Someone with a working-class back story.

· A patriot who is ambitious for Britain.

Our key messages are therefore:

· It is time for change after 13 years.

· Keir has changed the Labour Party and is now ready to change the country.

· We will put country before party.

Ellie emphasised that being trusted on the economy and national security are essential tests that need to be passed before voters will give us permission to talk about growth, the NHS, opportunity, safer streets and clean power.

Morgan McSweeney, Campaign Director, presented next. He said it was clear the Tories were planning a spring General Election from all their actions. They were dramatically increasing the national spending limit and the limits for donations not being publicly declarable.

Labour needs to gain 125 seats for a majority and perhaps a quarter of all the seats in the Commons (over 160) for a working majority. This requires double-digit seat gains in every nation and region.

In 2019 we had lost our way morally as well as electorally. We have gone from that to the best local election results in 26 years in May 2023. More important than the scale of the council gains was the map of where they had happened, we won in places where we had been in long-term decline, with our highest swings in the most Leave-voting wards, the most Tory wards and the most working-class wards. We have redistributed our vote towards the seats we must win, when it had become over-concentrated in cities and university towns in a way that produced a very inefficient return in terms of number of MPs won. There are no no-go areas for Labour. In Scotland there has been an incredible turnaround.

Morgan stressed that polls don’t predict election outcomes, they are a measure of progress. They can change very fast before and during an election campaign. Any problems people have with Labour are not priced in until the campaign starts, so we need to get rid of them now. We can’t allow the media to say the election is already done as then the Tories will be allowed off the hook of defending their very weak 14 year record and will run with a narrative that Labour is weak and too much of a risk to take. They have a strategy based on defending 80 seats and attacking 20.

Postal votes will be essential as they increase propensity to turnout, we need to ask every Labour voter if they will switch to voting by post.

We have to have a ruthless focus on our core battleground seats, the ones that will give us a majority, resourcing them with everything we can. Other battleground seats, that help build that majority, will get what resource is needed. Non-battleground seats will be twinned and asked to support the battleground ones.

Candidates are very important compared to in the past, they make a big political and organisational difference to their constituency campaign.

If the General Election is on the same day as the local elections, our targeting will prioritise winning a parliamentary majority.

Next we heard from David Evans again about the work that had been done rewire Labour’s structure, processes and culture. We had had to start by restoring the party’s belief it can and should win and had the authority to lead. We had encouraged risk-taking and innovation in the byelections. Everything has been speeded up but still needs to be speeded up more. We have a medium-term plan for beyond the General Election so we don’t just stop after Polling Day.

Hollie Ridley, Executive Director of Nations and Regions, presented on the Win 24 field operations strategy. We have to change the behaviour of voters, that requires understanding them first, persuasive storytelling, building trust and influence, and finally turning changes of belief into the action of voting Labour.

As well as securing switchers direct from other parties, we have to reinforce recent switchers, increasing the turnout of existing Labour voters, and tactically squeeze the minor parties by emphasising that only Labour can beat the Tories.

We have taken tactics around personal candidate contact with key switcher voters pioneered in previous elections in Hove and Ilford North and spread these to all battleground seats. We need high quality doorstep conversations, where emails and phone numbers are collected so that the conversation can be followed up with a personal letter and a call from the candidate.

We are using real voices as endorsers to show voters other people like them are voting Labour.

Hollie described the metrics we are using to measure performance of candidates and CLPs.

Gail McDade Director of Mobilisation, presented on the measures we had in place to mobilise members, mapping what they can do, and exporting activists into battleground seats. We are identifying and re-engaging pre-2015 key activists who dropped out of activity during the Corbyn years and Covid.

It was emphasised that our best quality data comes from doorstep conversations and we use that to identify what types of voters are potential switchers and direct our digital and direct mail communications to those voters.

Andy Whyte, Director of Governance and Legal, presented a paper on the remaining parliamentary selections, which was agreed. The procedures we had agreed for non-battleground seats in May were not streamlined enough. We have therefore approved a new process for non-battleground seats that are also not notionally held by Labour. The existing process will continue in the remaining few battleground seats that have yet to select, and in any retirement seats and other notionally Labour-held seats. All of the seats that the new process applies in will be advertised very soon for applications to be sent in. People who expressed an interest in any of the 94 seats advertised in a batch in the summer will be specifically asked if they want to convert that into a formal application. Applications will be considered by panels of two NEC and one REC member who will include at least one trade union representative. The panels can hold interviews if necessary. There will be at least one panel in every region, more where there are many seats to deal with. The panels can create a shortlist of one, who will be deemed selected, if there is only one candidate, or run a contest between a shortlist of candidates, lasting two weeks, and culminating in a vote at a hustings. This route to shortlisting is faster than the previous model. Due diligence will be conducted after shortlisting on the provisionally shortlisted candidates. Selections in these seats will take place early in the New Year.

In the Q&A, the suspension of the Croydon East selection was raised. David Evans said that it had nothing to do with online speculation about the Anonyvoter voting system, and was a one-off case, unique to Croydon East, that didn’t affect any other CLP’s selection. It was serious enough to have led to suspension of the process while a through investigation was conducted.

We ended the day with a report from National Policy Forum Chair Anneliese Dodds MP. She said the Clause V manifesto sign-off process should be smooth as the full NPF process had been completed, unlike in the 2017 and 2019 elections. NPF elections were being held in the summer, so there would be no NPF reports to Annual Conference 2024. We agreed a trade union amendment to the effect that the July NEC meeting would decide whether the qualifying date for contemporary resolutions to Annual Conference would be 1 August, or the date of the General Election if it had already happened (contemporary resolutions have to relate to events that have happened after a certain date, usually the date of publication of the NPF reports, but there are none next year). We ended the meeting by voting to fill NEC vacancies on Policy Commissions, and to re-elect Gavin Sibthorpe of the GMB as NEC Co-Convenor of the Joint Policy Committee.

NEC Report – 26 September 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年9月27日 16:15:00 +0000

The September NEC met in Glasgow, and before the meeting we went out canvassing for Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.

We welcomed Ellie Reeves MP back onto the NEC after a seven-year absence, in her new role as Deputy National Campaign Co-ordinator.

Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) Chair Harry Donaldson gave the CAC report. The CAC had met on Monday to make rulings on the validity of the 323 motions submitted to Annual Conference, and group them into topics for the Priority Ballot. Appeals regarding motions would be held by the CAC on Thursday. The deadline for submission of emergency motions was noon on 29^th September. 1,012 CLP delegates and 280 union and socialist society delegates had registered. Total attendance at Annual Conference including visitors would be 16,177. The party was receiving 1ドルm in income from fringe events, of which there will be 850. There were 237 exhibition stands, generating a further 1ドル.85m in income. For the first time there would be SME Sunday, as well as the business forum held on the Monday of Conference. The Conference charity would be the Glioblastoma Research Group at the UCL Cancer Institute, in memory of Margaret McDonagh.

We then received the draft grid of what would happen in each session of Conference. It was noted that no "reference backs" had been received on the National Policy Forum (NPF) reports.

The following were appointed as Assistant Chairs of Conference: Luke Akehurst, Nesil Caliskan, Abdi Duale, Wendy Nichols, Ellie Reeves, Gavin Sibthorpe.

We then considered constitutional amendments (rule changes). Those agreed included the following:

· To define clearly that "supporting the campaign of an individual that stands in opposition to, or declares an intention to stand in opposition to, a Labour Party candidate in a public election" is a prohibited act leading to expulsion.

· To abolish the rights of CLPs to initiate disciplinary action, as this contradicts our national, independent processes and can lead to inconsistent or unfair decisions or vexatious cases.

· To return to the pre-2018 system whereby the only motions that can be submitted directly to Annual Conference are "contemporary" ones relating to issues "not substantially addressed in the reports of the NEC and NPF to Annual Conference". This is because policy motions should be sent direct to the NPF for consideration as part of its policy making cycle. This was taken to a vote and passed by 19 votes to 7.

· To clarify that the default structure of a CLP is delegate-based, with All Member Meetings (AMMs) as an alternative where there are geographical or other reasons why a delegate-structure would not work.

· That changing from a delegate-structure to AMM or vice-versa can only happen by a two-thirds vote at a CLP AGM.

· To clarify that a CLP Trade Union Liaison Officer (TULO) must be a member of a Labour Party-affiliated union and elected by and from union delegates to the CLP, where they exist.

· To reduce the number of voting officers on a CLP Executive Committee from a minimum of 14 to a minimum of 6 (Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Women’s Officer, TULO and Vice-Chair, Campaigns & Membership). The other posts are not being deleted; they revert to the status they historically had of being "Functional Officers" without voting rights. Larger CLPs that want to can get approval to keep them as full voting Officers. This will hopefully make it less onerous for CLPs to fill such a large number of roles, produce a streamlined EC that can take decisions faster, and de-factionalise elections for practical roles like fundraising and social media, and equalities roles, by removing them from the "numbers game" around factional control of the EC. We agreed an amendment from Unison to the effect that if none of the six Officers self-identifies as BAME, the BAME Officer becomes a 7^th voting member of the EC. The amended proposal was agreed with only Ann Black abstaining.

· That vacancies on the National Women’s Committee should be filled in the same way as vacancies in the equivalent section of the NEC are.

David Evans then gave his report as General Secretary. He thanked Pat McFadden and Ellie Reeves for making a flying start in their new roles as National Campaign Co-ordinator and Deputy, and paid tribute to everything Shabana Mahmood had achieved in the National Campaign Co-ordinator role. He thanked field staff for the superb work they were doing in the three parliamentary by-elections. We were more than in play in all three. The Scottish result could be defining. The Tories will do anything to stay in power, including voter suppression measures such as the introduction of ID requirements and more complicated postal vote application forms. Next, they will bring forward statutory instruments to raise the election expenditure limit from 19ドルm to 30ドルm.

David reported Annual Conference will bring in 5ドル.2m in commercial income, not including the business day. There are already 200 delegates registered for Labour’s Business Conference on 1 February 2024, which has secured 600,000ドル in sponsorship. Membership of the Rose Network (donors of over 1,000ドル a year) was now 614, of whom 147 are in the Chair’s Circle because they give over 5,000ドル a year. A lottery licence has been acquired and the first draw will be on 3 November. The lottery has 1,400 members and 150,000ドル of annual income before it has been hard launched.

The Party HQ will move 500m to the new premises on 20 October and be operational the following week. The East Midlands, North West, Scotland, South East, and Yorkshire & The Humber offices are also moving to better premises.

The Party now has 379,543 members, of which only 11,760 are in arrears. At 3% this is the lowest arrears rate for a decade. An Autumn recruitment campaign is being launched. Membership rates for 14-19 year olds, students and members of the armed forces, are being raised to 12ドル a year, as 1ドル a month is the minimum direct debit the party system can draw.

Following the work of the Forde Working Party, the new enhanced code of conduct was being circulated to all members.

A diverse intake of eight interns identified by Patchwork, which recruits interns from underrepresented groups in the workplace, had been with the party during the summer.

Staff were being send on leadership training provided by the Civil Service College, and management training provided by ACAS.

An Away Day was being held with all the Labour Metro Mayors and the priority councils for the May elections were being brought together.

In memory of Margaret McDonagh, a Leadership Academy in her name was being set up to foster excellent staff leadership.

Angela Rayner then gave her Deputy Leader’s Report. She said our policies on the Future of Work are polling well. She has now been appointed as Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. There had immediately been some very tough issues to deal with, such as the Government intervention in Birmingham City Council and Sunak’s announcement he would scrap the nutrient neutrality planning rule. Local government as a sector was reeling from 13 years of cuts and dwindling reserves. Angela’s team were working with the LGA Labour Group to support the worst affected councils, including Birmingham. We had opposed Sunak’s u-turn on landlord energy efficiency regulations, as this will lead to tenants facing higher energy bills. Angela was preparing for Women’s Conference and Annual Conference as she will give the opening speech at both. Her "Rayner on the Road" camper van tour was visiting marginal constituencies.

Ellie Reeves gave a detailed and confidential report on strategy and progress in the three parliamentary by-elections of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Hundreds of members were being mobilised in each of them, and we had very strong candidates. New campaign techniques are being piloted with great success, especially in Mid Bedfordshire which is very rural so requires a different model of campaigning to urban areas.

Morgan McSweeney reported as Campaign Director. He repeated David’s concerns that the Tories will ask the Electoral Commission to raise the General Election spending limit to 30ドルm. This shows they have that much of a war chest, they are in the final run-in to calling the election, and they don’t view it as a lost cause. The electorate remains very volatile – swing voters can swing back. Rutherglen and Hamilton West on 5 October will be a seminal moment which could set Scotland on a new course. The Scottish Labour Party has been transformed organisationally and politically. Annual Conference is hugely important as it is almost certainly the last one before the General Election. We are taking no votes for granted. The two by-elections on 19 October are in very stretching seats for Labour. Winning Tamworth would imply the Tories would only hold 47 seats. It is their safest by-election defence in this Parliament. Mid Bedfordshire is now a three-way marginal but has been Tory since time immemorial, any result is possible there.

We have to be ready for a May General Election. The Tories will be saying "net zero will cost you" and behavioural economics suggests that is a powerful message as a loss is twice as painful as any countering gain offered. We have to highlight the opportunities decarbonisation presents in terms of cutting bills, creating jobs and providing energy security.

NEC Report – 25 July 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年7月26日 15:47:00 +0000

The NEC meeting on 25 July started with obituaries to Margaret McDonagh, Glenda Jackson and Bob Kerslake.

Our first major item of business was to review reports from the Forde Report Working Group regarding actions complete, actions not being progressed, and actions underway from Forde’s recommendations, and draft codes of conduct, aimed at improving party culture, for members and people in leadership positions at every level of the party. It was noted that training on the new codes of conduct and on recognising and avoiding anti-Black racism and Islamophobia would be rolled out, starting at a role-holder weekend in September, and to the wider membership in 2023, and the codes of conduct would be built into how the newly reconstituted CLPs on the new boundaries will work. A competitive process to find the third-party training providers on anti-Black racism and Islamophobia was being launched. We agreed the codes of conduct in principle but sent them to the Forde Report Working Group for consultation, from where they will go to the NEC Officers’ Group for final sign-off.

Anneliese Dodds gave a report as Chair of the National Policy Forum (NPF). She said the final-stage NPF meeting in Nottingham from 21-23 July had been a very successful weekend. She thanked Head of Policy Development Adam Terry, who had completed the process and was now moving overseas, for his incredible work, and Margaret Beckett for the inspirational speech she gave at the NPF dinner. Labour was united and ready to deliver, and all our commitments met our fiscal rules. NPF representatives had had to give ground to achieve compromise and consensus. Staff were now consolidating the final report and ensuring that all the text correctly reflects what was agreed.

David Evans gave his report at General Secretary. The Labour victory in Selby & Ainsty changes the weather for any Tory MP with a majority under 24,000. There will be an evaluation and review of both by-election campaigns so that lessons learned can be incorporated into the campaigns in Tamworth, Mid-Bedfordshire and Rutherglen & Hamilton West. Learning from the local elections was also being implemented, particularly the need to focus on the right voters in the right places. Our data was a lot better and the trainees that had been recruited were now in the field. 119 parliamentary candidates have now been selected and a residential training weekend for them had been held in Stratford-on-Avon, where the organisational strategy and what that means they need to do as leaders in their CLPs had been shared.

The Win ’24 strategy was about identifying target voters and then building trust and confidence with them and finally persuading them to vote Labour rather than Conservative. It would be rolled out over the summer. The General Election task forces at HQ are updating their plans and there is already a plan ready for a snap General Election. May 2024 still looks like the most likely election date. The Boundary Commission had now provided final new constituency boundaries and the membership system would switch to these after Annual Conference. A new version of "Organise", the system for emailing members, had been launched.

Annual Conference would be from 8-11 October and there was greater interest in and scrutiny of what we were doing than ever before. The number of exhibitors, the income generated, and the likely number of attendees were all at record levels.

On fundraising, our target is to match the Tories and we are more or less doing that. There are now 590 people in the "Rose Network" (donating over 1,000ドル a year). Phoning members was achieving a 20% conversion rate to donating. The party had completed its application for a lottery license.

Membership now consists of 385,324 fully paid-up members, and 13,871 in arrears. The level of arrears is at a historic low.

The party has tested the market for office rental and decided to leave Blackfriars Road after Annual Conference, to move just 100 metres to a long-term HQ, suitable both for the General Election and a party in government, in Rushworth Street. The new building is cheaper, bigger, and of higher quality and specification.

The party is looking to hold the September NEC meeting in Scotland.

In the Q&A, David said six of the regions and nations were also moving to improved premises. He noted that the rules will be fully applied to anyone found to campaign for a non-Labour candidate in any region. He noted we have 100 extra staff in the field compared to 18 months ago.

Keir Starmer then gave his report as Leader. He said the NPF had agreed a good policy package that combined the mutually reinforcing strands of reform and responsible economics. This would feed into the manifesto and ultimately to implementation in government.

He thanked the staff and activists for their work in the by-elections. Selby & Ainsty was an incredible result, an unprecedented size of Tory majority for Labour to overturn. It was number 237 on our target list. The strategy of getting direct switchers from the Tories had been vindicated. Uxbridge & South Ruislip was disappointing. ULEZ had prevented us winning despite 1,000 activists on the day. Our 66% contact rate means we had detailed data on what issues were affecting voting behaviour. We have to learn from our successes and failures. The strategy we have is correct, but we can be tripped up by issues. Three more crucial by-elections are on the way. Peter Kyle is doing more work as the lead MP in the Mid-Beds campaign than any of the Tory MPs representing the seat have ever done. We are using all these by-elections to improve our campaign operation, but they do divert time and energy.

Keir said Annual Conference will be a very important platform to showcase the incoming Labour Government as it is the last one before the General Election. Unusually, Labour has the last slot of the major parties this autumn.

Angela Rayner gave her report as Deputy Leader. She thanked Anneliese and staff for the positive NPF weekend. Her own policy brief on workers’ rights had come out of the NPF with a policy offer that would radically transform the lives of working people. We have not watered anything down, we made policy together. We need to be government ready as the workers’ rights policies need to have the mechanisms and legislation prepared so they can be achieved as a priority within our first one hundred days in power. We would campaign hard on the New Deal for Working People. She praised the team on the ground in the by-elections as being absolutely fantastic.

Finally, Morgan McSweeney reported as Campaign Director. He said the last eight days had been extraordinarily important. They had started with the residential weekend for parliamentary candidates. Our organisational and political plans had been set out to them and training had been provided. The quality of the candidates is inspiring. A new ground campaign methodology has been launched: "Pathways to Persuasion", which will result in higher quality voter contact.

Then there were the by-elections. The amount of work was incredible: 300,000 leaflets delivered, 17,000 contacts on polling day, 9,000 volunteers, 350,000ドル in online donations.

Selby was one of the best results in Labour’s history. The biggest margin we have ever overturned in a by-election since WW2, and the second highest swing. There were no local specific reasons to cause a fluke result, it is a largely rural constituency. It shows that it is "utter bollocks" that only the Lib Dems can win in this type of seat. We exuded hope and optimism and kept our focus on the voters.

We mustn’t gloss over Uxbridge. It was not a fluke either. It was not good enough. ULEZ was the main issue of the day in Uxbridge because the cost was linked in voters’ minds with wider cost of living issues. We can’t have a mindset that says we can win through organisationally even if we have unpopular policies. Our green agenda needs to be about cutting bills, creating jobs and energy security.

Morgan said he had been studying complacency in campaigns, particularly the case studies of the losses in 1992 in the UK, 2016 in the USA and 2019 in Australia. These had each subsequently led to lessons being learned and wins in the next election, but we don’t have the luxury of another learning experience of losing a winnable election, we have to skip straight to winning. None of those case studies were about inexperience, or laziness, or thinking it was in the bag. They were all about ducking the difficult conversations about political problems. Problems need to be fixed now; it is too late to do it during the short campaign.

Finally, there had been the NPF, where we chose the path of difficult decisions. We need to combine hope and realism and learn from both Selby and Uxbridge. We have to listen to the voters on ULEZ. The alternative is to pretend we didn’t hear it, or were unlucky, or were never going to win Uxbridge.

NEC Report – 23 May 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年5月27日 15:54:00 +0000

The NEC met on 23 May for the first time since the local elections, with spirits consequently high.

The first main item of business was to sign off the assignment of incumbent MPs (except those that have failed a trigger ballot or have outstanding disciplinary issues) as candidates for new seats following the boundary review. In all except one case contests between MPs had been avoided. However, the abolition of the current Wirral South constituency means that both Alison McGovern MP and Mick Whitley MP wish to stand in the new, redrawn Birkenhead constituency, so a selection contest using an OMOV ballot between the two will proceed. Some members raised anecdotally that they had heard (literally during the meeting) that Wirral West MP Margaret Greenwood had announced her retirement, and this created an extra vacancy in that area, but as this hadn’t been notified formally to the party we agreed the paper as it was with a proviso that it could be changed if the two MPs indicated a different stance after any news about Wirral West.

Parliamentary candidates who have already been selected in target seats are also being assigned to new seats, but in every case there is an obvious successor constituency.

It was noted that there is also a contest between two incumbent MPs (Gerald Jones MP and Beth Winter MP) for the new Merthyr Tydfil & Upper Cynon constituency but that this was a delegated matter for the Welsh Executive Committee.

Concerns were raised about the Copeland selection proceeding on the old boundaries rather than the new Whitehaven and Workington boundaries, as members in the town of Workington can’t participate. It was noted that this was unfortunate but that the process was already under way so could not be changed.

We then agreed a paper on the procedures for selection in non-priority constituencies, defined initially as those with a Tory majority of over 40%. This category of seats will involve a review by an NEC panel of any due diligence concerns about applicants, but then move straight to shortlisting by a panel consisting of three members of the relevant CLP. They may either run a contest if there are multiple suitable candidates or announce a shortlist of one if there is only one suitable applicant. The NEC representative has to sign off the final shortlist and can refer it to the Chair of the Organisation Sub-Committee for final adjudication.

David Evans then gave his report as General Secretary. He said the party had used the local elections as a testbed for the General Election campaign and drawn key learnings from the experience. The results were hugely encouraging but there was no complacency about the General Election. The results were not inevitable, they reflected political and organisational choices over the last three years. The organisation had worked well but there would be a thorough evaluation process.

David reported that Simon Mills had stepped down as Executive Director, Finance after very good stewardship that left the party with no debt and no deficit. It was testament to Simon’s hard work that he was being replaced by two people, having become responsible for all the functions based at the Labour Central office in Newcastle. Chris Tidswell would join from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) and be Chief Financial Officer. John Lehal would be Chief Operating Officer and oversee key service functions. Scott Hardy has been appointed as the new Regional Director for Yorkshire and the Humber.

David said the General Election organisational strategy would be about persuasion of swing voters, not just GOTV of Labour supporters. We had to consolidate support which is currently provisional and conditional.

Over the summer there will be residential training for field organising staff and candidates, and regional events for the volunteer leadership of each battleground CLP.

Further professional development of staff was being pursued with leadership training for those at director level and above, and management training for everyone with a managerial responsibility.

The party now has 395,811 members, of whom 17,233 are in arrears. At 4.3% this is the lowest ever recorded level of arrears. 48,295 of the members have joined in the last 12 months and 15,000 of those since the start of 2023.

Annual Conference was set to be a major commercial success, with 220 exhibitors registered, bringing in 1ドル.7m in income. There was a waiting list for fringe space, and sale of that has already raised 700,000ドル. The summer raffle had raised 280,000ドル.

David stated that he had reminded staff of the standards expected and procedures for reporting complaints, after recent distressing news about harassment in Parliament.

In local government, Campaign Improvement Boards had been invaluable in resolving longstanding issues.

There is almost certain to be a recall petition and by-election in the SNP-held seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, and this will be led by Scottish Labour but be a big priority for the UK Labour Party.

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney then reported on the local elections. The campaign had been framed as "Build a Better Britain". This was the biggest set of local elections in the four-year cycle but did not include London, Scotland and Wales. Labour gained a net 536 councillors and 22 councils and the Tories lost over 1,000 councillors despite most of the seats they were defending having last been fought in 2019 which was a year so bad for them that it led to Theresa May resigning. Labour’s margin of 9% over the Tories in projected national vote share was the best for 26 years, since 1997, and the best for an election not coinciding with a General Election since 1996. We are now the largest party in local government, winning back the Local Government Association Chair. Our votes were where we needed them in marginal seats, not stacked up in large majorities in wards in big cities and university towns. Labour was up 8% in Conservative wards compared to 6% in Labour wards and 4% in Lib Dem wards. Our vote is becoming distributed more efficiently. Labour improved most in Leave-voting areas. We were up 3.7% in the most Remain areas, but up 7.8% in areas with a Leave vote of 58-63%. This is important because the Leave vote is distributed in more parliamentary constituencies (it "won" 77% of them) than the very urban-concentrated Remain vote. We are reversing a trend that has been long-term of piling up a vote among graduates in big cities and university towns that can’t deliver a parliamentary majority.

Morgan gave examples of key wins in parliamentary marginal areas: Swindon where we have a majority for the first time in 22 years, Dover, which we have not won since 1995 and is a strongly Leave area, and the Mayor of Middlesbrough, part of Teeside where there are seven parliamentary marginals. But as well as making progress against the Tories we also took Brighton with sweeping gains from the Greens with our first majority there since 1999 and took York again with gains from the Greens.

There is no need for pre-election "dodgy deals" as voters know what they need to do in terms of tactical voting to beat the Tories. The Greens were up 8% in Tory seats but only 0.5% where they were fighting Labour for the seat. This is a lethal cocktail for the Tories.

Leaders usually peak in their first or second year of local elections, but Keir has built up year-on-year: Labour was 12% behind the Tories in 2019, 6% behind in 2021, 5% ahead in 2022 and 9% ahead in 2023.

We notionally gained parliamentary seats that are beyond the 200 gains mark, such as Aldershot. We are forming a coalition of Labour support that can win in every type of seat.

Our messaging grid had been Cut the cost of living, Cut crime, and Cut waiting lists. To this we had added campaigning around sewage in rivers as the public are very concerned about this. The adverts attacking the PM for his responsibility for the Tory record over the last 13 years had captured media coverage of the campaign and got it back onto our key messages when the Tories had been dominating the media with "culture wars" messaging about trans issues and grooming gangs.

For next year’s local elections we would aim to select candidates earlier and spread best practice about how to campaign where the Greens are our main opponent.

Keir Starmer then gave his report as Leader. He thanked David, Morgan and Campaign Chair Shabana Mahmood MP for their work. Overall, he was very pleased by the results but there are some pockets that still need to be worked on. The range of places we won was impressive, including Medway, Dover, Plymouth, Swindon, Stoke and Middlesbrough. The trajectory is improving but we need to keep it up and there is a lot more to do. A lot more will be thrown at us in the General Election. Everything we do has to be exceptional to go from the heavy 2019 defeat to government. He had set three objectives in 2020:

1) Recognise the scale of the defeat and change the party.

2) Expose the Tories as not fit to govern.

3) Set out our positive case for change.

The third had been started with policy announcements at Annual Conference last year. This year’s conference is probably the last showcase before the General Election. He had set out our five missions for a purpose-driven government. The one on "NHS Fit for the Future" had been launched on Monday and well-received. The National Policy Forum meeting in July is the culmination of the first full policy-making cycle since 2014. There will be a choice of whether to reach a consensus on key policies at the NPF or slug it out in public at Annual Conference.

Returning to the local elections, Keir concluded that our messaging and targeting had been vindicated by the results.

Shabana Mahmood gave a very vigorous defence of the attack ads against Sunak. She said:

1) We have to hold the Tories to account for the whole of their record since 2010, there can be no clean slate for Rishi because he is "new".

2) The criminal justice system has been wrecked by the Tories. Labour has to be on the side of the victims of crime.

3) As a person of colour, she rejects the "dog whistle" charge – the PM’s ethnicity should make no difference to whether we condemn Tory failures around criminal justice.

I asked about the process for signing-off power sharing agreements in hung councils. Nesil Caliskan (Local Government rep) explained that there was a far higher volume of requests to form coalitions because the Tory collapse had increased the number of hung councils. Each request is considered on a case-by-case basis. The NEC panel looks at the merits of the proposal from the local Labour Group and the local context. In most cases the panel challenged details and requested further clarification. The panel did not want to sign-off unnecessarily broad and unstable coalitions with lots of small partners if a majority could be attained by Labour plus one additional party. The panel also looked closely at who any Independent councillors were who a deal was proposed with and would not authorise coalitions with ex-Labour councillors as this undermines Labour Groups. Some "Independents" were actually "Tories in disguise". Post-election agreements, with NEC approval, are very different to pre-election pacts which are against party rules.

Angela Rayner reported as Deputy Leader about the meetings with unions and businesses she was holding around the company around a fair deal for workers. Labour’s coalition includes employers who want to do the right thing. She had been campaigning with Anas Sarwar in Rutherglen and spoke at the Scottish TUC, which is not a universally pro-Labour audience. She had enjoyed the "battle of the gingers" vs. Oliver Dowden when she substituted for Keir at PMQs. A Labour government feels closer than ever, the data shows this and the attitude of our activists does too. We must keep focused as this is our real opportunity to change lives for the better. We must also keep in mind how bad five more years of the Tories would be.

Finally, under AOB, we agreed that once the current seven selections are completed all parliamentary selections will be conducted using the new constituency boundaries.

Unite Executive Council elections 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年3月31日 17:00:00 +0000

If, like me, you are a Unite member, you should have received ballot papers this week for the Unite Executive Council. They must be returned by post to the Independent Scrutineer by Noon Tuesday 25th April 2023.

I would recommend voting for the following candidates, they don’t necessarily share my politics but with other long-term Unite members an assessment has been made that these are the best people on the ballot. Please circulate this information to anyone you know who is a Unite member.

Regional seats

East Midlands

Dawn Borthwick

Raffiq Moosa

Ireland

Marie Casey

London & Eastern

Daniel Collins

Jane McGuire

North East, Yorkshire & Humber

Gary Andrews

Tricia Willoughby

North West

Jacqueline Wilson

Gary Walker

Scotland

No recommendation

South East

Tracey Whittle

South West

Caroline Baikie

Wales

Kerry Owens

West Midlands (Note the ballot paper for this one is being reissued due to an error)

Stuart Hedley

Vanessa Williams

Jason Powell

National Equalities Seats

Women’s

No recommendation

BAEM

Susan Matthews

Disabled

Martyn Gwyther

LGBT+

Sam Shaw

Retired

No recommendation

Industrial Sector seats

Automotive

Craig McDonald

Community Not for Profit

Ben Davies

Education

Ken Drury

Finance & Legal

Kelly Shaw

Food & Drink

Andy Smyth

Graphic Paper Media

Peter Gomez

Health

Steve Thompson

Passenger

Nigel Atkinson

Dayne Astill

RTC

Davy McCord

Andy Rafferty

Services

Mark Barnes

Construction

Stuart Grice

Bill Parry

NEC Report – 28 March 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年3月30日 09:36:00 +0000

The March NEC was rather livelier than the previous one in January.

The meeting opened with fine obituaries for Labour stalwarts Eddie Lopez and Janet Anderson.

Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood then moved and seconded their motion calling for Jeremy Corbyn to not be endorsed as a parliamentary candidate by the NEC.

Keir said we were all here for one purpose, to win. He had changed the party irrevocably. We are out of the EHRC special measures, but the job is not complete yet. Now we need to resolve the issue of Jeremy Corbyn being suspended from the PLP, so we can move on and focus on the voters. We have to deal with anything that distracts us or jeopardises the changes we have made. We can’t have the exciting policies we want to promote in the local elections overshadowed by internal machinations.

Shabana said that every day we are undoing damage done before 2019. Jeremy’s behaviour since stepping down as leader has been a threat to us winning the next General Election. The EHRC found that under his leadership we breached the Equality Act. It has taken two years of hard work to come out of special measures. We have tackled issues that brought great shame to our party. Jeremy has failed to move one inch from his suspension and acknowledge and deal with what he did. We would be failing our candidates if we don’t protect them from old sores. We have to deal with this ahead of the local elections. We don’t propose to start a selection process in Islington North now. This cannot be allowed to fester any longer, we need to be able to fight a General Election campaign free of the stain the EHRC found.

There was a very passionate debate, resulting in the motion passing by 22 votes to 12.

I voted and spoke in favour. I’ve written up the points I made in my speech into an article for Labourlist which you can read here: https://labourlist.org/2023/03/luke-akehurst-why-i-voted-for-the-nec-motion-to-block-corbyns-candidacy/

Keir then gave his leader’s report. He covered the local elections, but not in detail as there was a full item on this later. He also reported on the launch of the five missions for a Labour Government, with specific launch events also held so far for the ones on economic growth and safe streets. The new press conference facilities at our new HQ had been used for the first time. Finally, he spoke about Scotland, where the new SNP First Minister Humza Yusaf inherits a woeful record. Yusaf has been attacked within the SNP because of his total incompetence in every brief he has held. This is a big opportunity for Labour to win back seats in Scotland, which will be vital to winning a majority in the Commons. Keir has been to Scotland five times in recent months.

David Evans then gave his General Secretary’s report. The EHRC has taken the party out of special measures after two years. He thanked Anneliese Dodds for doing much of the heavy lifting on engagement with the EHRC. There is no complacency whatsoever as driving antisemitism out of the party is not a job that is complete. There are only 37 days until the local elections. An "Exporting London" Officer has been employed as London has a quarter of the party membership but only one tenth of the battleground parliamentary seats and no elections this May. We are piloting innovative ways to get members to campaign where it matters. The local elections are dominating our work. The new Task Force structure at HQ is working well. Each task force has short term objectives for the local elections and then ones until the end of January 2024, in case there is a May 2024 General Election. We are constantly testing and evaluation campaign techniques. For instance, in the City of Chester by-election, where we have a very active CLP, we were able to look at canvassing data and discover there was a 6% increase in propensity to turn out among voters who had met the parliamentary candidate during the campaign. Turnout among postal voters was 71%, but only 34% among voters who went to the polling station (overall turnout was 42%). People who Labour canvassers had contacted went up to a 57% turnout if contacted once, 64% if twice, 72% if three times and 80% if four times. This shows the importance of doorstep campaigning. There had been an Away Day for our 100 new parliamentary candidates on Saturday. They are brilliant, energetic and committed. David has been campaigning in Blackpool, Crawley and Medway for the local elections. He detected huge discontent with the Government but support for Labour is conditional and provisional, so reassurance through face-to-face contact with Labour is essential. He reported that the party now has 400,757 members. 23,000 are in arrears, but this is down from 35,000. The total membership remains at what is a historically very high level, and is pretty stable, with joiners and leavers cancelling each other out. On party finances David said the Electoral Commission report shows 2022 was the best year for Labour since 2008, and better than 2017 and 2019 combined. Q4 of 2022 was the first quarter since Q1 of 2008 when Labour had raised more money than the Tories, beating them by 1ドル/4m. There were 550 members in the Rose Network (donating over 1,000ドル a year) and 115 in the Chair’s Circle (donating over 5,000ドル a year), an all-time record. A multi-million-pound pledge had been made and 1ドル.5m had been received in Q1 from major donors. The party was introducing a new HR system and working with Patchwork to recruit people from diverse ethnic and social class backgrounds for work experience. This will eventually lead to an apprenticeship scheme. We are on the cusp of 26 new trainee organisers joining the staff, in addition to the 30 existing trainee organisers, and the 13 digital trainees (all of whom are women). The diversity of this group of new staff is very impressive. The total staff headcount is about 400 and following tough decisions 18 months ago to retrench, and successful fundraising, we are now growing the organisation, as well as changing its shape to focus on digital, comms and field and enhance the regional teams.

In the Q&A to David I stressed the importance of looking after the welfare of parliamentary candidates and providing mentoring and pointing them to the bursary scheme, as it is a stressful and physically, mentally and financially demanding.

The NEC then considered an amendment to our parliamentary selection procedures so that if a candidate is turned down from being long-listed on due diligence grounds they now have a right of appeal to a fresh panel. Appeals will be held on a very short timescale so that the overall timetable of the selection is not delayed. This proposal was agreed unanimously.

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney reported on the local elections. He highlighted Derby, Plymouth and West Lancashire as key battleground councils. He said voters need to know three things:

1) Britain is worse off because of Government choices.

2) There is an alternative, this situation is not inevitable.

3) Labour has a long-term plan to give the UK back its future. We have plans now to cut the cost of living, cut waiting lists and cut crime.

Morgan said we have three things to do:

1) Target the right wards and the right councils where the ground campaign will make a difference.

2) Ask all Labour voters to get a postal vote. This leads to a three times higher turnout. Almost everyone who will vote in a local election already has the required Voter ID, but all voters are more likely to vote if they vote by post.

3) Focus on getting the debate back onto the cost-of-living crisis. It isn’t a competent government if it has allowed 10.4% inflation and interest rates to soar, and the has the OBR saying living standards won’t rise for 5-6 years. The Government is economically disastrous.

He said we are pushing hard to find candidates in every seat so every voter has the opportunity to vote Labour. These elections are the hardest in the cycle for Labour to do this due to the rural nature of many of the councils up this time. We have never had 100% coverage. In 2019 we had candidates in 77.2% of wards and we are on track to improve on that. If anyone at local level attempts to hold back from nominating candidates in order to help other parties, that will be viewed as a betrayal of Labour and will result in disciplinary action. The campaign launch is on Thursday. The Tories are aiming to gain back some Southern seats where we are not in contention that they lost to independents in 2019 in order to offset losses to us. The end of the campaign will coincide with the run-up to the Coronation, so it will be difficult to get politics into the media. We are fighting against a Tory macro-strategy of killing hope, breeding cynicism and saying the country’s problems are nothing to do with government choices.

We next received a series of reports about the progress made by the NEC’s Working Group on the Forde Report and finalised our response to it. The details of this work will be posted on the party website here in the next few days: https://labour.org.uk/fordereport/ David Evans said that for the first 18 months of his time as General Secretary he had been focused on dealing with an inherited mess regarding finance, legal and HR functions. We could not win a General Election without addressing what we had found. He outlined the following timeline to explain why some of Forde’s recommendations had been overtaken by events before they were published:

April 2020 Forde Report commissioned

August 2020 Evidence submission to Forde closes (terms of reference were to look at the 2014-2019 period but this bled over into events up to August 2020)

October 2020 EHRC Report published

December 2020 EHRC Action Plan agreed

September 2021 Rule changes flowing from EHRC Action Plan passed by Annual Conference

April 2022 Independent complaints procedure in place

July 2022 Forde Report published

November 2022 NEC Action Plan in response to Forde agreed

January 2023 EHRC removed party from special measures

Today NEC finalises response to Forde

We were compelled by the EHRC to respond well in advance of the Forde Report being published, and had already started achieving many of the outcomes Forde wanted by other means.

When the EHRC Report was published we decided to broaden from its focus on antisemitism and implement all its required actions so that they applied to all protected characteristics.

Forde made 165 recommendations. We split these into 3 categories in November. 50 had already been completed. 73 were under way. 42 were not being pursued.

David said he was ashamed of where we had been, proud of the progress made, but not complacent.

Annelise Dodds reported on work being done among staff to address all the points made by Forde about the pay gap, recruitment, retention, and unconscious bias training. She reported on engagement with the BAME PLP caucus, the LGA Labour Black caucus and the BAME members’ event.

Executive Director of Legal Affairs Alex Barros-Curtis said that of the 42 recommendations not being pursued, 36 related to the independent directorate for complaints, a route we had already decided not to go down for legal reasons two years ago when we agreed the EHRC Action Plan. The 73 recommendations under way had been split into some being driven forward by staff, some being driven forward by LOTO and GSO, and some being looked at by the NEC Working Group.

Vidhya Alakeson, Director of External Relations, said the NEC Working Group had met three times and gone through 26 recommendations, turning them into four grouped proposals:

1) A code of conduct for members

2) A code of conduct for people in leadership positions

3) Adding anti-Black racism training to our suite of training courses

4) A cultural reset which will be driven forward in the new CLPs after the CLP boundary changes in October, and will be aimed at creating meaningful debate but inclusive conversations at CLP level.

David said he would have counselled Martin Forde against being interviewed by Al Jazeera, but he and Annelise would be meeting Mr Forde soon to reset the relationship. The NEC had wanted to invite him to a meeting pre-publication of his report but there had been no clear consensus about inviting him post-publication. We had been keen to implement the recommendations and just cracked on with it. There were lessons learned about clear terms of reference, timescales and budgets when commissioning reports and these had been implemented in the Liverpool report process.

The recommendations from the Working Group and final response to the Forde Report were agreed unanimously.

Anneliese Dodds gave a National Policy Forum update. Policy Commissions will consider submissions made since 2021. The Joint Policy Committee will meet on 26^th April. It has agreed procedural guidelines for the full NPF, which will be held in Nottingham from 21^st-23^rd July. CLPs will be able to contact the Policy Team and feed in comments via them to NPF members between 9^th May and 5^th June. Keir’s five missions signal priorities but aren’t everything we will do in government, whereas the six policy commissions are catch-all – everything fits into one of them.

Finally, we agreed a suite of new safeguarding policies.

NEC Report – 24 January 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2023年1月27日 15:30:00 +0000

The January NEC meeting was the first one held at Labour’s very impressive new HQ in Blackfriars Road in south London. The overall feel was the most united, friendly, and focused externally on winning the election that I have seen since I re-joined the NEC in 2020.

The meeting opened with a minute’s silence for Holocaust Memorial Day, and the solemn tone continued as we noted the obituaries of former MP Alice Mahon and former NEC Chair and AEU stalwart Brenda Etchells.

David Evans presented an upbeat General Secretary’s report. He said we had to capitalise on the opportunity presented by our poll lead with a modern campaign machine. He was focused on sharpening our comms, print, digital and field operations. He believes the current support the party has is conditional and provisional and there is still a lot of work to be done to convert poll leads into cast iron commitments to vote Labour in the May 2023 local elections and the General Election, whenever it comes. We have to have a positive, optimistic, future-facing offer for voters, and will be shaping that through the National Policy Forum this summer and the Annual Conference in October. The task force structure for fighting the election was in place, and LOTO was now integrated completely as one team with party HQ. Staff training was being provided on management and leadership skills. The regional comms teams were being enhanced. Interviews were taking place for 11 digital trainees. We were advertising soon for an additional of trainee organisers.

David outlined Project Victory, the plan for May’s local elections, where 8,000 council seats are being contested. The new requirement to provide ID in order to vote was something Labour had opposed as it is a fairly obvious Tory attempt at suppressing turnout, but we need to campaign in a way that doesn’t put voters off by suggesting it is too difficult, and to get more people signed up as postal voters, as this is unaffected by the new law. Selections of council candidates are proceeding faster than in previous years. 71 parliamentary candidates have been selected and this will rise to 100 by the start of the local election campaign. 57% are men, 43% women. 20% are BAME, 10% disabled and 10% LGBT+. There is no complacency about any of these diversity stats. The 10,000 backlog of disciplinary cases has been cleared and the new independent aspects of the complaints process are up and running. Preparation for Annual Conference is underway. Membership is still at levels that are high in historic terms. There are 407,328 members, of whom 25,000 are in arrears. Labour Hub is replacing the existing log-in systems for all campaign tools. The new membership portal will give greater reporting, analysis and ability to fundraise from and mobilise members. The new membership hub is intended to be rolled out in early February, subject to testing. There will be investment in the Organise system for emailing members to make it more effective. The party is in a relatively strong financial position, with growing commercial income, and large and small donations. A two year pay deal and deal re. the pension scheme has been agreed with staff. Lord (Waheed) Ali has taken on a senior role in donor relations. The winter raffle raised a record 400,000ドル. The party has moved into its new Blackfriars Road HQ and our accommodation in the regions and nations is also being reviewed.

Keir Starmer then gave his Leader’s report. He described the party as being in reasonably good shape, with a united PLP taking the arguments to the Tories, and polling looking good for the time being, but it was going to be a long year, with a General Election unlikely in 2023. We need to be disciplined and focused and ready for the greater scrutiny we will face. It is almost certain that Annual Conference will be the last one before the General Election. We need to strike the balance between maintaining our confidence but not being complacent. We have to fight like we are 5% the Tories, every vote needs to be earned. There had been a busy and positive start to the New Year for Labour. Keir’s New Year speech had been focused on hope, change and the need for a decade of national renewal. He had visited Northern Ireland with Peter Kyle and Angela Smith on the 25^th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, to try to push for progress on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Attending Davos with Rachel Reeves had been a statement about Labour wanting the UK to play a greater part on the global stage. The discussion about the NHS was about the need to reform and restore it. It needs to offer a different service as well as being better funded. Other policy announcements had been about getting the over-50s back into the labour market, and Bridget Phillipson’s announcements about childcare and skills. Keir referred to the stories about Tory sleaze and said he could not understand why Sunak did not sack Zahawi. The Shadow Cabinet will be out across the country on 28 and 29 January for the national campaign weekend.

Angela Rayner gave her report as Deputy Leader. We had two excellent new MPs from the North West, Sam Dixon and Andrew Western, following the Labour wins in the City of Chester and Stretford & Urmston by-elections. The morale of activists and voters is high, they are convinced Labour can win and make a difference. On 9 February we hope to get Ashley Dalton elected as the new MP for West Lancashire. Angela condemned the "levelling up" grant awards as not being targeted on the basis of need, but on protecting Tory MPs in marginal seats. She was leading the opposition to the Procurement Bill and the new anti-strike legislation. The latter would not resolve the current disputes, which are driven by pay not keeping pace with the cost of living. She also lambasted the Tories over voter ID requirements, aimed at making it harder for people to vote them out of office, and sleaze.

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney spoke about the local elections on 4 May, now less than 100 days away. We have to use them to demonstrate we are on course for a majority, and to improve all aspects of our campaigning. They are the largest set of elections in the cycle and the last or second to last set before the General Election. They are only in England, and not in London. 8,000 seats are up for election in approximately 240 councils. Morgan described three categories of key council: traditional swing councils that are more Tory than the ones up last year, areas where we have been going backwards and need to recover, and a small number of Labour councils facing insurgencies from the far right or independents. When last contested in May 2019 the results across the country had been 28% Conservative, 28% Labour, 19% Lib Dem. The Tories had lost 1,330 seats in a good year for the Lib Dems, which led to Theresa May resigning. This is therefore a tricky set of elections for Labour as the Tories are defending a position that was already a low point. Labour was seeking to present a positive offer, build campaigning capacity across the country, improve turnout, present Keir as candidate for PM, and get in shape for the General Election. Our strapline was "Build a Better Britain". Themes would be cost of living, NHS waiting lists and sager seats. We need to get headline stories on the TV news so that there is greater awareness of our team and policies. We will be using digital channels to get content to voters who might make a difference. Regional comms is a priority as we need coverage in the regional and local media, which voters trust more than the national media. We were deploying the trainee organisers, have an increased campaign budget, and total integrated campaigning. We would overcome the voter ID challenge by increasing the number of postal voters, this is the proven way to increase turnout. By the end of the month selections in target councils should be complete. We needed a campaign that was far more targeted on the key swing wards in key swing councils. We need to persuade members in areas like London without elections to show solidarity and travel and campaign in target councils. Every Shadow Cabinet member has a target council they are supporting. We are trying to select candidates faster every year and always aim for 100% coverage so everyone can vote Labour. We mustn’t underestimate the Tories, they are still the most efficient election-winning party in the world.

Finally, Anneliese Dodds gave an update on the National Policy Forum. There are ongoing discussions with the unions about how many amendments each NPF member can submit, and what the threshold should be for an alternative position to be put to Annual Conference (i.e. what percentage of NPF members need to back the minority position).

I also wanted to report on a key decision at the Organisation Committee the previous week. We agreed that CLPs will change boundaries to match the new parliamentary constituencies agreed by the Boundary Commission immediately after Annual Conference. Details of how this will work are online here: https://labour.org.uk/activist-hub/governance-and-legal-hub/clp-hub/clp-reorganising-faq/

NEC Report – 29 November 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年12月02日 09:21:00 +0000

The NEC held its Annual Away Day on 29 November at Labour Central, the Newcastle home of the Labour Party's Head Office in the north.

The meeting began on a sad note with obituaries, including that of our fantastic National Constitutional Committee colleague Judi Billing.

We signed off on the NEC’s updated Aims and Objectives, Terms of Reference, Code of Conduct for NEC members and committee membership.

I will continue to serve on the Complaints & Disciplinary Sub-Committee, Equalities Committee, Organisation Committee, Development Fund Panel, Boundary Review Sub-Committee and as Liaison Member to Labour International CLP.

The main business of the day was a series of presentations about preparation for the General Election.

Campaign Co-ordinator Shabana Mahmood opened by emphasising the scale of the task facing Labour. We need a swing larger than in 1997 to get a single seat majority. The election is likely to be in summer 2024 and the polls are expected to tighten. Labour is under far more scrutiny as we are viewed as a government in waiting. This perception makes it easier to fundraise and easier to get a good range of candidates applying to stand, but it brings the risk of complacency. We have to make sure we pin the blame or economic chaos on Tory policy choices since 2010, we have to reinforce the hard-won economic credibility we have built up, and we need to make a positive offer to the electorate. Organisationally, we have recruited a new cohort of trainee organisers, and will be adding digital campaigning trainees. The new script used in Wakefield is important, particularly the question asking voters how likely they are to vote Labour on a scale of 1-10 helps us target swing voters. 80 candidates will be selected by the end of the year, currently almost 50% are women. We need to select candidates as early as possible, as it transforms the campaign having the candidate in place, and we have a new "First 100 Days" pack for them to make sure they hit the ground running.

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney said that 20% poll leads should give us confidence but we had to avoid complacency. He quoted Shimon Peres: ""Polls are like perfume-nice to smell, dangerous to swallow." Morgan said the Tory Party are in the business of winning General Elections and are the best party globally at doing that, they have increased their vote share six times in a row, at every General Election this century. Polls change, in March 2022 Opinium put Labour only 1% ahead and all the experts said the Tories were about to take the lead, but two days later Boris was fined for "partygate", and that triggered the series of events that has led us to a 20% lead. If the pollsters can’t predict one week ahead, we should be cautious about any prediction of the outcome of the General Election. The polls are volatile, and we could go back down in the same way we have gone up. The boundary changes make our task more difficult. The Tories have immense financial resources and media, particularly the Daily Mail, who will try to destroy Labour. Our objective is a majority Labour government. The battleground seats are not all in the "Red Wall" or all in the "Blue Wall", they are spread across every region and nation and we have to win seats across the country so we need messages and organisation that work for the whole country. Everything comes down to what will be in the mind of swing voters in swing seats at 6pm on Polling Day. We have to demonstrate to them that we understand their lives, we have a plan to make their lives better, and we are strong enough to see that plan through.

Morgan described the volatility of the electorate. From 70% of voters being core vote for either Labour or the Tories in 1997, the figure is now 40%, so 60% of the electorate are swing voters who are up for grabs. Voters definitely want change, but the Tories are adept at reinventing themselves and saying they now represent change from their own record of the last 12 years. The Tory coalition built by Boris in 2019 is very large but was forged from whipping up cultural divisions so has clear weaknesses. Sunak is so far just trying to accommodate the different factions in his parliamentary party. The main Tory attack line will be to accuse Keir and Labour of being weak, so we have to present leadership, a fresh start and that we will do what is best for the country, not act like the Tories do in the narrow party interest. On the economy we have to show that mortgage rate rises are down to Tory economic choices, to protect our own economic policy and to get our message out that we will prioritise growth but that we have proposals for doing that which are green. We need to promote a story about the country. People are angry with the political system because they can see it has caused their economic pain. We need to explain how we will redistribute power and rise above divisions and culture wars with a mission to unify the country. We have to promote all our candidates, starting with Keir as the candidate to be PM, and getting him out of Westminster speaking to voters as much as possible. Our manifesto has to be a manifesto for the voters, not internal party audiences.

Organisationally, Morgan emphasised the need to have a disciplined focus on target voters in target seats, because the party’s data showed that in May 2022 too much effort had gone into seats that were very safe or unwinnable. We have to close the funding gap with the Tories, who have outspent us in the last three elections. We had to change the party completely to convince voters to trust us again, as in 2019 we were financially, politically and morally broken. Conference 2022 showed the public Labour had changed in a way that was real, not just presentational. The changes are bearing electoral fruit – a 35%-30% lead over the Tories in May, and councils gained all over the country, but this was not enough. Under Anas and Jackie, Labour has started to recover in Scotland and is now back in second place. We are transforming our campaigning machine based on lessons both from our own past victories in 1997 and 2001 and from winning campaigns by sister parties across the world.

General Secretary David Evans said he now had a very high calibre staff team thanks to tough legal, financial and HR decisions in 2020 and 2021 and the first major restructure in over a decade. The run of General Elections close together meant that the party had needed to reduce spending by 5ドル million but was now on a financial even keel. He was concerned that voters didn’t yet understand how much Labour has changed. Internally decision-making has been streamlined, resources had been prioritised around campaigning, and the structure is now based on task forces focussed on key aspects of the General Election.

Morgan said that the most voters we ever manage to canvass in a General Election is about 4 million out of 40 million, so we need to make sure the 4 million people we do canvass are all in the marginal seats where it will make a difference. Similarly, campaign spending has to be focused on reaching the right voters in marginal seats. Extra canvassing contacts in a seat delivers an increase in Labour’s vote share, the problem in May was that in many councils we didn’t target our canvassing at the most marginal wards. Seats Labour did target got an extra growth in vote share above the national increase. We were too cautious and not ambitious enough in our targeting in May, and we need to share data more to get activists to buy in to moving to work in marginal seats.

Director of Digital Tom Lillywhite said there had been no strategic rigour to Labour’s digital campaigning in 2019. We had now abandoned vanity metrics such as how many views a video gets and focused on making sure the right voters that we need to persuade see our content. There will be a new digital trainee staffer in every region and nation. Staff, supporters and candidates would be upskilled in digital campaigning.

Director of External Relations Vidhya Alakeson said the party had three key categories of external stakeholders relevant to the General Election. The first was business, which was essential for establishing our economic credibility. We needed to particularly build relationships with SMEs and with the manufacturing, agriculture and construction sectors. The second was faith and ethnic minority communities, which are electorally decisive in 30 of the key target seats. The third is to engage with and reverse recent disengagement from Labour among men, particularly older men, and working class voters, where our poll leads are lower than among women and middle class voters, the opposite of the historical pattern.

National Policy Forum Chair Anneliese Dodds spoke about the policy development process. The final stage NPF meeting on 21-23 July 2023 would resolve differences of opinion well in advance of the General Election and agree election winning policies. Consultation documents will be published by each Policy Commission in January, with consultation open until March. The Commissions will then reflect on the submissions and produce draft policy documents which will be circulate in April with amendments being submitted by a deadline in May. A draft policy platform will be presented to the July NPF meeting which will from this produce a final policy platform which is put to the vote at Annual Conference 2023 alongside alternative positions. If the document is passed by a two-thirds majority it becomes the party programme ahead of the final manifesto being agreed by the Clause V meeting.

David Evans reported on fundraising. The party needs 20ドルm for the short campaign as well as funding for the long campaign. This year had been the best non-General Election year in memory, with 6ドルm in donations already in the bank. It still isn’t enough. A membership surge of 30,000 since September had brought in a huge cash injection, not just membership fees but also 300,000ドル in top-up donations from those new members. Targeted members were being phoned about donating and this is working well. Support is being given to the regions and nations to develop fundraising as it needs to happen at this level as well at CLP level.

Finally Executive Director Nations and Regions Hollie Ridley spoke. She described the trainee organiser and digital trainee schemes, the selection process and the progress made with getting candidates in place so far, and the way in which byelections had been used to pilot and test new organising techniques.

There was an extensive Q&A session. I asked about postal vote strategy, how we would respond to the new "voter ID" requirements, urged flexibility in targeting so we can pick off "targets of opportunity" (seats we suddenly discover are swinging unexpectedly heavily) and called for early selections in less winnable seats where there is a consensus about the candidate and for a job description for candidates in these seats that emphasises a high visibility, low resource campaign and providing twinning support for nearby marginals.

After lunch, we agreed a paper on implementing the recommendations in the Forde Report. This established membership of an NEC working group, its terms of reference, its timetable and that it will have Carol Sewell (NEC BAME rep) as Chair and Johanna Baxter (NEC Chair) as Vice-Chair. We had already categorised Forde’s recommendations at the previous meeting into those that had already been implemented, those that could not be progressed due to significant legal, financial or regulatory issues, and those that are in progress or require further analysis. This meeting further sub-divided the final category into those that can be taken forward by staff, those that need to be considered by LOTO (Leader’s Office) and GSO (General Secretary’s Office), and those to be dealt with by the NEC Working Group (grouped into cultural change and tackling discrimination). The LOTO and GSO category will be reported back on to the March NEC. The NEC Working Group will also report back to the same meeting and final decisions will be voted on if the group could not reach unanimous decisions. Progress reports will be made on implementation to the Working Group in April, July and November 2023 and published on the Forde Report page of the party website, with a final report to the Working Group in December 2023 and then to the NEC for approval.

Finally, Vidyha Alakeson presented a paper on Delivering on Equalities in 2023. Key recommendations were:

· Not to hold the BAME and Disabled Members’ Conferences and elections at them to national committees until after the General Election, producing a saving of about 450,000,ドル and allowing the alternative arrangements below to be tested.

· To hold the in-person Women’s Conference on the Saturday of Annual Conference 2023.

· To work in partnership with Labour Women’s Network to support the fifth

cohort of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme.

· To strengthen BAME Labour (the affiliated socialist society) by assisting the existing BAME Labour Committee in conducting democratic and

transparent elections in Q1 2023; conducting a renewed drive for equalities data to identify BAME members of the Labour Party; look further into the collection of membership fees for BAME Labour and take appropriate action; all self-identifying black and minority ethnic members will be invited to join and stand for elected positions in BAME Labour; BAME Labour’s affiliation fees continue to be waived until a newly elected committee is formed and the affiliate can be deemed as self-sufficient.

· BAME Labour to elect the NPF reps that would have been elected by the National BAME Committee.

· Tackle underrepresentation of Black men by focusing the next cohort of

the Bernie Grant Leadership Development Programme on Black members only, as this is where we as a Party faces our biggest challenge when it comes to representation and where a targeted programme could add the most

value in overall equalities impact.

· Establish a new local government focused Future Candidates programme to develop a diverse pipeline of talent through being councillors.

· Disability Labour (also an affiliated socialist society) to get an extra NPF seat alongside one for disabled trade unionists as the seats allocated to the National Committee of Disabled Members will not be taken up.

· The Party uses the period from now until the New Year to conduct a renewed drive for equalities data to identify disabled members of the Labour Party and all self-identifying disabled members will be invited to join Disability Labour

(membership of Disability Labour for disabled members is currently free).

· Accessibility training for regional teams and CLP role holders.

· Member training and engagement events :

o Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members event on 19th November

o Women members event on 5th December

o Islamophobia training for members on 17th November and 15th December.

There was extensive debate as some NEC members were unhappy about going back on the commitments regarding the BAME and Disabled conferences and national committees, whereas others felt it was better to help BAME Labour and Disability Labour flourish as socialist societies, as this was in line with the principle of autonomous self-organisation for liberation campaigns. Constructive amendments were accepted from the GMB to ensure appropriate union representation and from Gurinder Singh Josan about BAME self-organisation. An amendment from Yasmine Dar to elect a BAME committee using the method used to elect the NEC BAME rep and to delete the recommendations about BAME Labour was defeated with 5 votes for, 22 against and 1 abstention. The amended paper was passed with 21 votes for, 3 against and 4 abstentions.

NEC Report – 20 September 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年9月22日 08:01:00 +0000

The September NEC meeting is always dominated by conference business, and is a meeting of the outgoing NEC, as any newly elected members take office at the NEC AGM on the final evening of Annual Conference.

We began with a minute’s silence in memory of the Queen.

We then agreed the conference timetable and, in a contested vote, appointed Angela Eagle, Diana Holland, Gurinder Singh Josan and Wendy Nichols as assistant chairs of conference, meaning that they will be part of the pool of chairs of conference sessions alongside the NEC Chair (Alice Perry) and Vice-chair (Johanna Baxter).

After a short break due to a power cut, we agreed best practice award winners and then moved into a debate and votes on proposed NEC-sponsored rule changes.

We agreed to promote the following rule changes (alongside a number of uncontentious tidying-up changes to wording). These are all a lot more minor than the big package of changes last year.

· Capping each CLP’s Annual Conference delegation at six delegates to prevent conference floor being dominated by very large delegations from wealthy CLPs (and stop CLPs wasting money on 7^th, 8^th or even 20^th delegates which they could be spending on campaigning). This does not affect the voting strength of CLPs, which continues to be based on their number of members. Passed by 16 votes to 11.

· Restoring flexibility to how the NEC deals with shortlisting in snap elections and by-elections. Passed by 21 votes to 10 with 1 abstention.

· Changing the election system for the two CLP reps on the Conference Arrangements Committee from OMOV to a ballot of CLP delegates at conference. This is logical as the steering committee for conference should be elected by conference. It removes the need for any OMOV ballots every second year, saving the party about 25,000ドル. Passed by 20 votes to 11.

· Restoring the "one year rule" so that rule changes submitted by CLPs or affiliates are tabled and considered by the NEC for a year and can be properly responded to before being voted on at conference, rather than taken in the year they are submitted. Passed by 20 votes to 11.

· Councillors who do not withdraw from coalitions with other parties when the national party instructs them to lose the whip. Passed nem con.

The CAC Chair, Harry Donaldson, reported on arrangements for conference. He told us that 1,032 CLP delegates and 260 affiliate delegates had registered and that the total number of attendees including visitors was over 9,500.

We then considered the NEC position on rule changes submitted by CLPs. There were legal or consequential reasons to reject all of them, but contested votes went as follows:

· A rule to allow an MP suspended from the PLP to come back in as candidate if readmitted, even if another candidate had already been chosen. Vote went 21 to 10 with 1 abstention to oppose this.

· A rule to remove the NEC’s ability to stop affiliate backed candidates from being on parliamentary selection longlists on due diligence grounds. Vote went 21 to 11 to oppose this.

· A rule to ban property developers and private sector lobbyists from being selected for any public office until four years after they leave the job. Vote went 22 to 10 to oppose this.

· A rule to force the NEC to provide specific details of why it has imposed a candidate at any level. Vote went 21 to 10 to oppose this.

Keir Starmer then gave this leader’s report. He said it had been an extraordinary ten days of national mourning and that he had been honoured to represent the Labour Party at the Queen’s funeral and the new King’s accession council. He paid tribute to the Queen’s 70 years of public service. He said politics had now restarted after the mourning period and there was a clear divide over energy prices, with both major parties agreeing on a price freeze, but Labour believing the energy companies should pay through a windfall tax, while the Tories want working people to pay through tax in the future. As well as the cost-of-living crisis, the NHS was under-funded and the Tory policy on the economy and growth appeared likely to be based on failed trickle-down theories of making the rich richer through tax cuts and hoping some of their spending reached people lower down the economic ladder. Labour’s position is to build the economy in a way that deals with the climate crisis and creates the next generation of green jobs. We had an industrial strategy that aims to create growth across the UK. We were moving from a political era of a character divide with Boris Johnson to one of a policy divide with Liz Truss. A major statement from the Government on the NHS is expected on Thursday, and a fiscal statement on Friday. Keir said that whilst his 2020 speech had been acknowledging how badly Labour had lost in 2019, and his 2021 speech had been introducing himself to the country, the 2022 leader’s speech would be about his plan for Britain and would contain a series of robust policy propositions. On the Forde Report he reiterated his apology to all the individuals concerned who had been affected by unacceptable behaviour, and said we now needed to work on Forde’s recommendations.

We then moved to a discussion on the Forde Report. An extensive piece of work had been untaken by party staff over the summer to analyse the recommendations and group them into three categories, those that had already been enacted (because a lot had changed in the party while the report was being written), those that there were legal, financial or regulatory reasons for not enacting, and those that needed further detailed work on how to enact them. This middle group, initially comprising 79 of the 165 recommendations, will be referred to an NEC Working Group which will report back to the NEC Awayday in November. We agreed that if any NEC member feels one of the recommendations should be moved into the middle category from another category and examined by the Working Group, this would happen. The main political disagreement seemed to be over the inclusion of a recommendation about political neutrality of staff, which some NEC members felt meant staff being totally apolitical, whereas I made the case that whilst the staff leave their personal politics at the door, it is an element of their job for some of them to carry out political management tasks to ensure that the party moves in the political direction the NEC desires e.g. staff involvement in policy development is not a neutral task as the party leadership needs outcomes from the policy process that help it win elections. There was a move by Momentum supporters on the NEC to delay the entire process until after the Away Day, but we argued there is a strong desire from members to see action on implementing the recommendations sooner rather than later.

The following statement was agreed by the NEC:

"The Labour Party apologises for the culture and attitudes expressed by senior staff in the leaked report, as well as for the way in which those comments came to light. The report is clear that the culture of factionalism led to a situation where allegations of racism and harassment weren't being addressed. Elected representatives, our members, and the public rightly expect better from a progressive left-wing party.

The Labour Party is committed to ensuring that such a situation will not arise again and that any racist and discriminatory attitudes will be tackled immediately, wherever they arise, in whatever section of the party.

An apology alone is not enough, and that is why, even prior to the publication of the Forde Report, steps have been taken to begin to change the culture of the party. This work is ongoing, and the Forde Report provides additional recommendations to further this work and to ensure that this is never allowed to happen again.

The NEC is currently seeking the views of Party stakeholders in deciding how to take forward the recommendations from the Forde report."

We then moved on to David Evans’ report as General Secretary. He said the absolute priority remains preparation in case there is a snap General Election, although this now looks less likely to happen. He had been on a tour of all the nations and regions as part of this. The priority areas for investment were field operations, digital campaigning, and comms. A staff training programme had been launched with a focus on leadership and persuasion skills. The regional comms team and digital campaigning team have been scaled up. The party was doing well regarding securing high value donations and, once licensing is completed, will be launching its own national fundraising lottery. A pilot scheme phoning members who have been identified as potential donors was generating a lot of donations. Discretionary spending remains carefully scrutinised so that resources are focused where that are most needed. A very diverse and talented team of 31 new trainee organisers have been recruited. Moves were being planned to integrate locally funded organisers better into the staff structure. Party membership is now 401,000 of whom 28,000 are in arrears. This is 8,000 above the projected level for this point in the electoral cycle because there have been 24,000 new joiners this year. The turnout in the NEC elections had been 18.6% (approximately 70,000 votes cast out of approximately 380,000 ballots issued). There would be a briefing for the NEC on the introduction of the new membership database. The final legal hurdles were being crossed in procurement of a new HQ which is only 50% the cost of the current one and better configured both as a general working environment and as HQ for a General Election campaign. There was also a review going on of properties used to house the nations and regions.

Angela Rayner gave her report as Deputy Leader. She paid tribute to the late Queen’s 70 years of public service and said she was honoured to have spoken in the parliamentary tributes to the Queen. She then went on to speak about two Labour Party activists who have recently sadly passed away, Jean Stretton (former Leader of Oldham Council) and Kathryn Sharman. At the end of Angela’s report we held a further minute’s silence for these two comrades and others who have passed away since our last meeting. Angela said she saw Liz Truss as proof that the extremist ERG faction had taken over the Tories, and the prospect of them winning another term in government with such a hard right agenda was scary. We were focused on winning the argument for an economic approach based on higher wages as well as higher growth. She had spent the summer highlighting Tory failures on the cost of living and other scandals such as the dumping of sewage. She will be opening party conference on Sunday and closing it on Wednesday. She stressed that there is no ban on Labour MPs joining picket lines, it is just not viewed as a good idea for the Shadow Cabinet to do so. We will support union members taking industrial action.

The meeting closed with a report on the timetable for the National Policy Forum, which will meet online on 25 October to elect its chair and vice-chairs.

NEC Report – 19 July 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年7月21日 07:13:00 +0000

We had unexpectedly weighty business to conduct at the July NEC, as at 11.35am, 25 minutes before the meeting and well over two years after it was commissioned, we finally received the Forde Report into the leaked submission Labour never made to the EHRC. This was swiftly added to the agenda, and we all attempted to read bits of it during the first few agenda items and the lunch break.

Angela Rayner’s report as Deputy Leader opened the meeting. She described the no confidence in Boris Johnson debate, and said his speech was delusional and that the Tories were trying to divide Labour over Brexit and levelling up. There had been more personal attacks on Angela from the Tories, which did not work as they were based on misogyny and classism. Angela outlined her work on the Procurement Bill and the Employment Bill, which the new PM might drop. Labour was fighting against Tory attempts to break strikes. The heatwave was clear evidence of the climate crisis, and Angela was exposing the Government’s lack of resilience planning. Angela was looking forward to bringing the policy-building project, "Stronger Together: A Better Future for Britain" to Annual Conference. She had attended both the Durham Miners’ Gala and the Tolpuddle Festival. Asked about frontbenchers being told not to attend picket lines, she said this was to stop the Tories making industrial disputes about the Labour Party, we all support the trade union movement.

At this point the NEC voted by 27 votes to nil to immediately publish the Forde Report. You can read it here: https://www.fordeinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/The-Forde-Report.pdf

David Evans then reported as General Secretary. Task forces had been set up to prepare for the General Election, they will report regularly and fully to the NEC. There need to be tough decisions about which areas of campaigning machinery we invest fastest in. He praised the work of staff and NEC members in administering the initial tranche of selections. The trigger process for incumbent MPs was almost complete. We all want to complete all the selections in good time so that we move away from the candidate impositions of the 2017 and 2019 snap elections. He had absolute confidence in the due diligence process for parliamentary candidates. No one has an absolute right to be a candidate. Whilst membership will continue to trend downwards until there is a General Election (this is what always happens), the curve is not steep, and we still have 415,000 members (32-33,000 in arrears) and have recruited 15,000 new members in 2022. The new membership IT system was being progressed and staff appreciated the serious impact on local role holders of lack of access to it at the moment. Party HQ would move out of Southside in October and there was a review of the entire property portfolio, including the nations and regions. There was a shortlist of 2 or 3 alternative premises, all near Westminster and flexible enough to be scaled up for a General Election campaign. On fundraising, 2ドル.3m had been raised this year, 1ドル.8m from major donors and 400,000ドル from the Rose Network (previously the 1000 Club). The target is to build a General Election war chest of at least 10ドルm from major donations, with the aspiration being to have this given or firmly pledged by the end of 2022.

In response to a question from Ann Black about the speed at which CLPs were being asked to reconfigure along the new parliamentary boundaries, David said he wanted to give provision to move as fast as possible where changes were minimal, whilst appreciating that it might take longer where the changes are more radical. The concerns raised by Ann would be taken back to the NEC Boundary Review Sub-Committee. The bottom line was that our structures had to have changed before there was a General Election on the new boundaries.

In response to my question about the urgency of increasing staffing in the regions, David said he was reviewing staffing right now for the English regions and would soon be deploying the 30 trainee organisers. The staff structure needs to be much more voter-focussed, and staff would be redeployed to achieve that, with a focus on comms and field operations roles.

David revealed that Campaign Improvement Boards would be working with the Labour Groups in the following local authorities: Birmingham, Blackburn, Croydon, Dudley, Hastings, Luton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Redcar & Cleveland, Stoke, Sunderland and Wirral.

He confirmed that, contrary to media reports, Labour does not use Non-Disclosure Agreements to mute former staff from speaking out on sexual harassment issues.

Keir Starmer then gave his Leader’s report. He commented on Boris Johnson’s exit and his extraordinary behaviour in the vote of no confidence debate. The Tories were now in a cat fight over the new leader, the candidates had all pulled out of the final TV debate as the first two debates had given Labour so much ammo, particularly their fantasy economics. The country needs a fresh start with a new Labour government, not just a new Tory leader, after 12 years of Tory failure. Keir briefly referred to the Durham Police decision, then spoke about his Gateshead speech on the economy, which had focussed on creating next generation jobs, revitalising public services, and uniting the country. Labour was pledging 28ドルbn in climate investment to create jobs and meet the UK’s carbon obligations. We had a buy, make and sell in the UK policy. Decision-making needs to be devolved as close to the people as possible. We need public services focused on prevention. Keir said we had come a long way electorally but warned against complacency. The question we were now being asked was how we would form a government, not if it is possible. Our candidate selections required a new and higher standard of candidate. We’ve seen the Tories brought down by scandals around MPs, so due diligence is essential. Annual Conference will be a very important opportunity to set out our stall and plans for the country. There would be strategic visits over the summer to build up to it.

Questions to Keir focussed on support for the current strikes. Keir said we are one labour movement, the party and the unions, hence the big package of policies around employment rights announced last year. There is no weakening of our commitment to trade unionism. The cost-of-living crisis was impacting severely on people who hadn’t had a decent pay rise for years. He knew that strike action wasn’t being taken lightly. Responsibility for unresolved public sector industrial disputes lies with the Tory Government. If we were in power, we would do things differently. Half of the Shadow Cabinet are members of unions that are on strike, so there is no question of an absence of solidarity, its about how you show that support, and Labour’s frontbench has to present itself as a government in waiting.

On making Brexit work, Keir said he had had talks in Berlin with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and focused on practical arrangements for the UK to work better with the EU, not going back in or re-joining the single market.

After the lunch break there was an opportunity to discuss the Forde Report, though all members noted it had not been possible to read it in detail when Forde had given it to the party at such short notice before an NEC. It was agreed that the September NEC meeting would be given a paper analysing which of the 165 recommendations we could and should implement. 61 of them relate to disciplinary processes, 28 to culture, 27 to social media and 49 to staff recruitment and management. Some of the ones to do with the disciplinary process may clash with the new process we have already brought in, and the party’s lawyers reminded us that this was designed in conjunction with the EHRC, and we were still under special measures from them.

There was a wide-ranging but calm and remarkably blame-free debate, showing perhaps how far the culture of the NEC has already moved on from the period of very bitter conflict the report covers. I spoke during the debate. I urged more time be taken to fully digest the report. I said I expected there would be a lot of useful recommendations around internal cultural change and tackling racism, but we shouldn’t revisit the changes the EHRC had already mandated us to make to the disciplinary system, which was working well. Some specific proposals would actually be detrimental, e.g. Forde’s idea of shrinking dramatically the number of NEC members who can serve on disciplinary panels would slow down the hearing of cases due to non-availability and conflicts of interest, mean many NEC members would have no active stake in and hence confidence in the process, and remove a forum which is actually the one where NEC members across the spectrum work best together in a quazi-judicial setting, and where we have developed a more trusting and consensual culture. I rejected the "both sides" tone of the report – you can’t make a moral equivalence between factionalism to try to fight antisemitism and factionalism to whitewash it. Rebuilding a healthier, more trusting culture was essential but would take time because the divisions in 2015-2019 were real. They were about widely different ideological perspectives. One wing of the party genuinely felt the other was connected to antisemitism and a threat to national security, and the other felt we were blocking the achievement of socialism. We had to understand that genuine political conflict does happen, but at the same time ensure there is professionalism in how our staff deal with that and comradeliness in how members resolve political differences. I was pleased that the report debunks the conspiracy theory that Labour staff had deliberately sabotaged the 2017 General Election campaign, but angry that such an obviously ridiculous idea had been given credence by being included in issues referred to an expensive inquiry, rather than us having had the political confidence just to laugh at it in 2020.

After this, Morgan McSweeney reported as Elections Director. We were trying to plan for a General Election without knowing who the Tory PM would be, what the date of the election would be, or whether it would be fought on the old or new boundaries. But we will be ready whenever it comes. Our candidates tell voters who we are. If we get candidate selection right it inspires people to vote for us, if we get it wrong it undoes all our work. Boris Johnson had been brought down by lack of due diligence on Tory candidates. The early investment in training 475 candidates through the Future Candidates Programme had already seen 7 of them selected. The process had been made more accessible by reducing it to 5 weeks, giving candidates access to Labour Print templates, and spending caps. There was a bursary scheme for candidates from two categories; working class or low income background and disability support. It was agreed that the Labour Party would run an online fundraiser for MotherRED, the scheme that gives funding to mums seeking selection. We are open to doing the same for other schemes that support candidates from categories who find it difficult to access the selection process.

We agreed some minor amendments to the selection process, including giving 48 hours notice of due diligence and long-listing interviews, clarifying the criteria for due diligence and allowing shorter longlists (4 minimum) and shortlists (2 minimum) as there had been cases where a strong local frontrunner meant there were not many applicants.

Morgan said we had a moral challenge to maintain women’s representation in the PLP despite being legally unable to run All Women Shortlists this time because the PLP is already over 50% women. Of the 20 candidates selected so far, 9 were women, 2 were BAME, and 15 lived in the constituency they were standing in.

Turnout in the selections so far was between 30% and 40% of members, which is consistent with the previous round in 2019.

Morgan rejected a claim that some candidates had been rejected at longlisting on "spurious" grounds and urged the NEC to trust the judgement of colleagues on the panels.

Finally, we took an update on the National Policy Forum, the draft timetable for Annual Conference, and the Equalities Report from Vidhya Alakeson, Director of External Relations. There were a number of questions to Vidhya asking for clarity about when the first BAME and Disabled Members conferences would take place, and she agreed to come back to the September NEC with a plan for 2023 in this regard. Under AOB there was further discussion about getting the party’s staffing focussed on the organisational front-line in the nations and regions.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 24^th May, I have also participated in the following other meetings:

· Organisation Committee

· Equalities Committee

· Complaints and Disciplinary Sub-Committee

· 2 meetings of the NPF Public Services that Work from the Start Policy Commission

· 3 disciplinary panels

· A number of parliamentary selection long-listing panels

NEC Report – 24 May 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年5月30日 07:26:00 +0000

This was another relatively short NEC meeting, at six hours, as the party moves on from the infighting of recent years to preparations for the General Election.

The meeting opened Angela Rayner’s report as Deputy Leader. She talked about the local election results and then about the misogynistic and classist attack she had been subjected to by the media, prompted by the Tories, and thanked Keir, the NEC and party for supporting her. The meat of her report was then on policy on employment and workplace issues. The Tories had dropped the Employment Bill from the Queen’s Speech. Labour was promoting a New Deal for Working People, and improvements to procurement law that would be helpful to good businesses that invest in their staff and the country. She praised the GMB getting a good agreement for Deliveroo drivers. Labour would ban zero hours contracts. Sadly 230,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. Angela had been on the picket line with Oldham bus drivers and attended the TULO (Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation) political weekend. She had been working with Labour Women’s Network and Stella Creasy to support women candidates. She highlighted the TUC We Demand Better march and rally due on 18 June. Labour had won the Commons vote on forcing the release of security advice about Lord Lebedev given to the PM. She was pursuing the scandals relating to dodgy PPE contracts, taxpayer funded focus groups for the Chancellor, and Baroness Mone. She believed that whilst law-breaking by the PM over party gate was not as central an issue the cost of living, it was still important to expose it as he has demeaned his office.

David Evans then reported as General Secretary. He described progress in the local elections as firm and significant. The staffing of the party was at its leanest but with fewer staff than in May 2020 we increased our vote share by 6% and got our biggest lead over the Tories for a decade. There were some flies in the ointment where we went backwards in individual councils. It was disgraceful the way Arooj Shah, who lost her seat as Oldham Leader, had been treated, and we had a duty of care to candidates. He said there was no complacency, and we can and must do everything better. We must change the party further and faster and challenge bad internal cultures and become inclusive and outward facing everywhere. Our digital campaigning was much improved. We had successfully framed the election as being about cost of living. The number of canvassing contacts made had broken records. We now need to put meat back on the bone of the staffing, that needs money. Resources must be focused on the battleground General Election seats and the key voters in them. We have raised more this year already than in 2021 but that is still not enough. Staffing was moving to a Task Force based structure for the General Election. A revised voter conversation script would deliver better information. Every marginal seat will have a plan of action tailored to it. Candidate selections have started. There have been 500 applications for the 21 trainee organiser roles. The Wakefield byelection campaign is underway and Simon Lightwood has been selected as candidate. We must take due diligence about candidates very seriously and that was done in Wakefield. We also have an excellent candidate in Tiverton & Honiton, Liz Pole. The independent complaints process is now up and running. Of the first c30 cases heard by NEC panels reviewed independently only one has been remitted back to a fresh panel. Membership is still declining but at a gentler rate than projected. With 10,000 new members this year, membership is now 420,000, of which 30,000 are in arrears. The new membership system for CLPs and branches to use will be in place by the end of the summer at the latest. Martin Forde QC has written a new letter saying his report will be completed shortly as it is being checked legally and for factual accuracy. Conference will run from Sunday to Wednesday, i.e. will not sit on the Saturday.

Answering questions on Forde, including a rather rude call for David to resign from one of the Momentum members, David said he was not in post when the Forde inquiry was set up, did not set the terms of reference and was confident he was discharging his duties correctly. He reminded Momentum they had had the chance to vote him out of office at Conference 2021 and had lost the vote. He will be the person who receives the report from Forde, he hasn’t received it yet. It will be a public document.

In other answers he said that Labour Muslim Network has applied to be an affiliated socialist society and this is being reviewed as per all applications. 58 trigger ballots for reselecting sitting MPs have been completed and 35 are underway. The NEC majority in the composition of byelection selection panels was raised and he reminded the NEC that one of our previous meetings had agreed the supplementary guidance on this as the rulebook contradicted itself since the 2021 rule change.

Keir Starmer then gave his leader’s report. It had been a good set of local election results. He cited wins in Cumberland (which includes the parliamentary marginals of Carlisle, Copeland and Workington), Rossendale, Southampton, Worthing, Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster, all significant pointers for General Election marginals. Barnet and Bury have large Jewish communities and could not have been won if we had not tackled antisemitism. There had been progress in Wales and in Scotland we moved into second place and got our best result for ten years. He thanked Shabana Mahmood, Conor McGinn and Morgan McSweeney for their leadership of the campaign. The next two years will involve a lot more hard work and hard decisions. We must win the Wakefield byelection. The Tories were out of touch and had no response to the cost-of-living crisis. He predicted they would U-turn on the Windfall Tax Labour had called for 132 days previously. People are really suffering but all the Tories do is stoke culture wars. They will try to focus on this and not the economy in the General Election. There was no content to the Queen’s Speech, even though it is supposed to be a two-year programme. We need to pull together and it was heartening that ASLEF and FBU conferences had voted to continue affiliation to Labour. We need good local campaigns to make national ones work across the country, hence the proposal for Campaign Improvement Boards. There are 11 months to a May 2023 election or 95 weeks to a May 2024 one.

Morgan McSweeney, Elections Director, reported in detail on the local elections. We won, with growth in every type of voter and every part of the country. The results would see us be the largest party in a General Election, but not yet reach 326 seats. It was the best Labour vote share lead for ten years. We gained a net 108 councillors and the Tories did a lot worse than expected. Our 12 council gains were in every part of the country. Labour vote share was up most in the North and the West Midlands, but the North West and Yorkshire had not performed so well. Our vote grew fastest in areas that had voted Leave in 2016. Where these elections mapped directly to parliamentary constituencies, there would have been 44 clear constituency gains. Labour’s projected national vote share of 35% would see us gain 88 MPs, whilst the Tories on 30% would lose 112. There were good signs of organisational health. 2.4 million canvassing contacts had been made between 1 January and Polling Day. This beats all the non-General Election years since 2010. We had fielded the most candidates of any party for the first time in six years (5,304 versus 5,273 Tories and 3,623 Lib Dems). We had stuck to the issue of the cost of living and not got dragged into Tory culture wars. This had all happened because the NEC had changed how the party works. The Tories can’t hold together their majority, forged around culture wars, because of the economy. Annual Conference is the next big set piece event and needs to be a platform to show the public what a Labour government would look like. In some areas the activity rates were low or local parties lack campaign skills. This must be addressed. There are fewer and fewer solid voters for either main party, and far more churn between elections, so we have to research what motivates voters.

Shabana Mahmood, Campaign Chair, added that there had been significant progress among Labour Leave voters and people we lost for the first time in 2019, but slower progress in winning over Remain-voting Tories, some of whom were moving to the Greens.

In the Q&A I warned about the Tories using government funding given to Labour councils for radical traffic reduction measures, such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, as a tool to create another culture war where they pit different elements of Labour’s support base against each other, namely our environmentalist middle class supporters against parts of our core vote who are reliant on their cars for essential journeys, and we lose votes at both ends of our coalition, to the Greens and the Tories.

We agreed that parliamentary selections in the following seats should begin as

soon as practicable: Bassetlaw, Birmingham Northfield, Bishop Auckland, Chingford & Woodford Green, Cities of London & Westminster, Dover, Erewash, Exeter, Hartlepool, Hastings & Rye, Hendon, Ipswich, Norwich North, Penistone & Stocksbridge, Peterborough, Plymouth Moor View, Shipley, South Swindon, Southampton Itchen, Stoke-on-Trent Central, and Watford. A review of procedures will be undertaken once selections in the earlier, first tranche of 16 seats have concluded, likely at a July meeting of the NEC. I urged a focus on speeding up the selections and said I hoped NEC colleagues would be relaxed about further tranches being signed off at NEC Officers’ meetings or Organisation Committee rather than waiting two months for a full NEC meeting. The aim remains to get all the marginal seats selected by the end of the year unless they would be massively impacted by boundary changes.

We agreed a proposal to create Campaign Improvement Boards which can intervene where there are dysfunctional Labour Groups or councils. I argued in favour of this, citing the success of NEC and LGA and government intervention in Hackney in the 1990s and 2000s in turning the worst local authority in the country into a very good one. The paper was passed by 20 votes to 8 with 2 abstentions.

We heard an NPF (National Policy Forum) update from Adam Terry, Head of Policy. There was a discussion about whether the final stage NPF meeting should be in Q4 of 2022 or summer 2023. Colleagues from the unions wanted to defer this decision until the July NEC meeting but that was defeated by 12 votes to 10 and it was agreed unanimously to hold the final stage meeting in summer 2023.

The meeting concluded with a very wide-ranging and impressive update on all the different strands of our equalities work by Vidhya Alakeson, the party’s new Director of External Relations, who stressed that "Equalities sits at the heart of what the Labour Party is about. It defines who we are as a Party and will define who we are as a future government." She outlined work around creating a more diverse party; engaging equalities stakeholders; and policymaking to support equalities.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 29^th March, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of disciplinary panels the proceedings are confidential:

Boundary Review Working Group

4 Disputes Panels

NEC-led local government selection panels in Newham

In memory of my dad

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年5月11日 13:32:00 +0000

My dad, Anthony Philip Akehurst, died aged 83 on 9^th May 2022. I wanted to tell his story so that future generations of the family, and anyone else who chooses to read this, will know a bit about this kind, modest, generous, helpful and caring man.

It’s impossible to tell dad’s story without setting it in the context of place, because he was born, lived all except two years of his life, worked and died all within about a 20-mile radius. Go to a map of East Kent and draw a rough quadrilateral with the west side being the River Stour, the north side the A2 from Canterbury to Dover, the east side the channel coast from Dover through Folkestone to Dungeness, and the south side a line from there to Ashford. Almost everything in dad’s life happened in this little part of the aptly named Garden of England.

Every day for 40 years my dad would drive to work on his farm every morning and back every evening through scenery literally labelled as an area of outstanding natural beauty. He was deeply rooted in this place, and he understandably didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Tony was born in July 1938 in his parents’ home, Kano, in the village of Dymchurch on Romney Marsh. He was the fourth of five children, with older brother Douglas already being 13, and sisters Daphne and Olive 10 and 7. His little brother Bob was born after the war in 1947. Dad’s father Philip was an insurance agent. Phil and his wife Freda were highly religious people, very active at the time in the Salvation Army, but later leaving it after some kind of falling out over the running of the local branch’s band. The whole family were musical – there is a press cutting I have from a local newspaper detailing all the different instruments each family member including aunts and uncles played.

The early years of dad’s life were played out with World War Two as the backdrop, in one of the most dangerous places in the country. East Kent was known as Hell’s Corner because it was the nearest part of England to the Nazi occupied continent, hence subject to air threat and in the case of Dover, where one of dad’s granddads lived, to long range artillery bombardment from Calais. Dymchurch, with its lovely wide sandy beach, would have been a key landing point for Operation Sealion, Hitler’s planned invasion, and dad’s house was immediately behind the sea wall. His parents were advised to evacuate but were stubborn and the family stayed through the entire war years in this potentially vulnerable location. Dad’s father was away serving in the RAF, serving as a ground crew electrician at the Lincolnshire base of 617 Squadron, the famous Dam Busters. For a little boy, the war was exciting. Dad saw both German and Allied aircraft, and later V1 doodlebug flying bombs, fly low over the sea wall. Next door was an anti-aircraft artillery gun base with soldiers to chat to. American GIs would come past and hand out sweets. Dad assembled a collection of shrapnel.

Dad didn’t enjoy school, other than showing a talent at Secondary Modern school for woodwork and metalwork. His only anecdotes about it were about avoiding being in the front row so the teacher couldn’t whack him on the knuckles with a yard ruler. He left with no qualifications as quickly as he was legally allowed, which in those days was just 15 years old.

At this tender age, he started working as a farm labourer, in his words "shovelling chicken shit out of sheds".

In April 1954, Phil and Freda moved from Dymchurch to Clipgate Farm, at Lodge Lees, a hamlet between Barham and Denton, and took up farming, so from this point Dad was working on the family farm. The holding initially consisted of 10 acres of land, a timber bungalow of a type built in 1919 for returning WW1 officers, chicken sheds and pigsties. In the first few years Clipgate produced eggs, which were sold to the public in the neighbouring towns and villages via an egg round. Pigs were also reared for sale at Canterbury and Ashford Markets. Dad talked about Christmases dominated by plucking vast numbers of turkeys. Over the years the farm slowly grew in size and diversity, particularly taking on contracting work to make it more cost effective to own tractors and combine harvesters, with major clients being at times Kent County Council for grass verge cutting and snow ploughing, and Pfizer, who owned an experimental farm next door at Breach Farm in the Elham Valley.

At 18, Dad was unlucky to be part of the final intake of conscripts who had to do two years of Cold War era National Service. Like his father and elder brother Doug he went into the RAF. He served on bases near Stratford-on-Avon and in Wiltshire, the only time in his life he ever lived away from Kent. His duties were to be a telephone operator, and because he could already play a trumpet from his Salvation Army days, a bandsman. He claimed in later life to be able to assemble and disassemble blindfolded all the main small arms, Bren LMG, Sten SMG and Lee Enfield rifle, in the event that Soviet parachutists had landed at night! He didn’t enjoy air force service. It was boring, arduous, they had very little money and he was homesick. If given weekend leave, he would motorcycle all the way back to Clipgate to get Sunday lunch at home.

Back home working on the farm, dad’s social life centred on the East Kent Young Farmers, which I believe he was an office holder in. He played bass guitar in a band with Bob his younger brother on lead guitar and earned money from gigs at weddings and the like well into the 1980s. Whatever he got up to in the 1960s before meeting mum, he never told us!

In 1970 he met my mum, Nan Davies, at a jazz gig at Bridge Country Club. You can read more about mum here: http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2021/04/in-memory-of-my-mum.html

He fell in love with this trendy and stylish young woman, who was eight years younger than him and from a rather more middle-class background. They had in common a love of music, and families that, whilst otherwise not very similar, were both staunchly Labour.

In October 1971 they married at Canterbury Registrar’s Office, and initially lived with mum’s parents in Rough Common, on the edge of Canterbury. Dad became very close to his in-laws George and Molly, who were delighted that their daughter had met a calming influence!

My mum viewed dad both with adoration but also as a long-term project – a rough-edged farm boy who needed to be poshed up a bit. She made him read library books every week, with some success as he got really into the historical novels of George MacDonald Fraser and William Clive. I’m not clear if listening to classical music was something he had done before, or a mum-imposed thing. She corrected his speech - dropped H’s and saying "ain’t" and swearing too much. He ignored her and carried on speaking the way he always had. Later she got him to give up smoking, but I’m fairly sure he carried on sneaking the occasional roll-up at work. He was given a constant rota of jobs around the house and garden, which must have been exhausting on top of a tough physical job at the farm. The bit of her lifestyle he really did buy into was the food, he was prepared to accept being bossed about as it came with cordon bleu dinners.

The family grew, to dad’s delight – the beam on his face in pictures with us as babies is something else. I was born in 1972 and my brother Sam in 1974 and sister Ella in 1976.

Dad was a wonderful father. He played sports with us and whilst he wasn’t that engaged directly in our play in the modern way he would ask us about everything we were doing and affect to being astonished by the complexity of our toy soldier battles compared to his. Where there were practical tasks, like fixing a Hornby railway set onto a massive base board, his DIY skills came into play. He drove us around on request to school, to drop us off to go running, and when we were sixth formers to and from the pub. On Saturday mornings in the school holidays he would often take us to the farm while he worked, leading to my brother taking a deep interest in tractors and their engines which set him on the path to be a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He didn’t push advice or life lessons on us, but was there if we needed to talk to him, as long as it wasn’t over the phone, his conversations on that being limited to "I’ll just get your mother". Everything we did or achieved seemed to delight and amaze him. When my sister encountered health problems, he devoted himself to her care, and has been there for her for decades providing incredible support through many ups and downs.

After a couple of years living with Molly and George, dad and mum moved to Coverts, another of the 1919 bungalows in Lodge Lees, on the plot next to Clipgate.

Dad was initially working on non-farm jobs as an insurance agent for his father’s old employer Wesleyan and General, and then as a sheet metal worker and later foreman at ActionAir and Canterbury Sheet Metal Works. He hated the factory jobs, and missed farming, so in the late ‘70s he went back to work on the family farm, staying there for the rest of his working life. This was the only major decision he ever took without mum and it angered her a lot, but I think it was probably essential for his happiness to be doing the job that he loved.

Farm life is necessarily seasonal, and my childhood memories are of dad almost staggering through the door having worked every daylight hour at harvest time, sunburnt and covered in dust from the combine harvester.

Throughout my childhood dad never earned much, money always seemed to be extremely tight. Their financial situation only really improved in the 1990s. Dad personally never carried any money at all, he gave his entire pay straight to mum as he didn’t want the rows over money he had seen between his own parents.

In 1979 mum and dad, having waited for a decent rather than decaying home for several years, benefited from the Callaghan government’s push on new social housing and were allocated a newly built house on The Hyde, an estate in the village of Chartham, just south of Canterbury. They lived in Chartham the rest of their lives, moving in the early ‘90s to Swanhaven, a house in the heart of the village. Mum’s extensive involvement in the village community and various clubs and committees meant that dad had a supporting role helping set up fetes, fairs and jumble sales, and helping us be perennial winners of "most unusual pet" competitions by bending the rules to include farm animals.

As we grew up and had families of our own, dad was delighted to become father-in-law to my wife Linda and Sam’s wife Catherine, both of whom he adored. He became a much-loved grandfather to a total of five little boys and has played an important role in bringing up my sister’s son Caspar, as she is a single parent and has lived with him at Swanhaven.

Dad made his first ever trip abroad with me (a day trip to Boulogne) as late as 1991, but he wasn’t a narrow-minded person, he liked to know about the wider world and enjoyed holidays with his children in Portugal and Italy and a period where he and mum explored Europe on coach trips.

I’m not 100% sure when dad formally retired from the farm, as he didn’t let on to mum that he had done so, and carried on going there every day, possibly to avoid being set chores. In any case, the ratio of tractor driving to tea breaks gradually reversed over time. He loved to spend time there with Bob and his wife Averil, who were not just his relatives and business partners, but also his closest friends. As late as the week before he died dad was at Clipgate, driving a golf buggy with Bob.

Having enjoyed robust health until he was nearly 80, Dad was diagnosed with a progressive lung disease in 2019, and this eventually caused his death, but he bore this unpleasant illness uncomplainingly and with considerable dignity, alongside deterioration in his hearing and eyesight which meant that he had to give up his car. Losing mum in April 2021 was a devastating blow to him after 49 years of loving marriage, but he was determined to carry on enjoying life, and in this last year enjoyed time spent with family and trips out to eat and to visit the farm. After mum’s death it was very touching that my private and reserved dad felt able to talk about his love for her and for us, and to hear how much we all loved him.

His mind was sharp and he kept his love of life right to the end, the week before his death he was still enjoying steak and a glass of wine at home.

Like many farmers, dad combined a love of being in the countryside and around nature with a passion for machinery and engines and driving. He loved music and could play piano, trumpet and guitar, and listened to a wide range of sounds but particularly trad jazz. He enjoyed both hearty food and fine dining, red wine, a G&T and a pint of Shepherd Neame Master Brew bitter.

He was a modest and somewhat shy man who never boasted about anything, but took obvious pride in his wife, children and grandchildren and their achievements.

But he was also extremely passionate in his political views. A lifelong socialist and Labour supporter, and in the ‘80s a big fan of Tony Benn, he was angry about injustice and inequality, and hated the Tories and the SDP.

He retained a keen interest in current affairs right until the final hours of his life, when he was asking about Ukraine and the local election results.

I never heard anyone say dad had done them any wrong, and I met many, many people he had helped through countless small acts of kindness. Everyone who met him enjoyed his company, and he was held in great affection by an incredible range of people.

He lived his life selflessly, working hard, nurturing and caring for his family, always putting others first.

He was fundamentally a very good, and lovely man, who consistently did the right thing as a husband and father.

I am honoured to be his son and loved him very much.

Dad is survived by his three children, five grandsons and his brothers Doug and Bob.

NEC Report – 29 March 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年4月03日 14:14:00 +0000

The March NEC meeting was relatively short, at five hours, and focussed very much on the practicalities of the coming local elections and preparation for the General Election.

David Evans gave an extremely comprehensive and confident General Secretary’s report. He said:

• There had been recent incidents where party staff had been briefed against. This would not be tolerated, and the party had the power to auto-exclude members who abuse staff.

• The local election launch would be in Bury on Thursday. The seats being fought were last contested in 2018 when Theresa May was at a low point in her premiership, and 40% of them are in London where that round of elections had been a very high-water mark. We are in far better shape politically and organisationally than for last year’s elections in May 2021.

• The staff structure is now more fit for purpose, but this restructuring is not complete yet. Shabana Mahmood has been driving through change as National Campaign Coordinator. Hollie Ridley has been promoted to Executive Director, Nations and Regions.

• The solid result in the Birmingham Erdington by-election was testament to the party’s political and organisational improvements.

• Work was being done on improving digital campaigning and integrating it through the organisation, as this was an area where the Tories had dominated in 2019.

• Operation Change was the internal transformation strategy to get the party ready for the General Election. Elements of it would be trialled in the local elections. Staff training was being enhanced, an Organising Academy established, and canvassing scripts modernised for the first time in over a decade.

• The boundary review was proceeding, with the secondary consultation hearings around the country ending on 4 April, and revised proposals being published in the autumn.

• The tough decisions taken to stabilise the party’s finances in 2021 had led to 4ドル million is savings year on year. The party had no debt and no deficit budget. Donor engagement was very encouraging and more had been donated in Q1 of 2022 than in the whole of 2021. There had been excellent fundraising gala dinners in the South East and North West regions, with the East Midlands one about to happen.

• The party was very mindful about the impact of not being able to use All Women Shortlists on diversity in parliamentary selections.

• There was a lot more to do on diversity of the party staff, 56% of the workforce was male, and more women were needed in senior positions. BAME staff were 9% of the men and 21% of the women, a discrepancy that needs to be addressed.

• The usual cyclical decline in membership has slowed to half the rate seen in 2021, and there are far more joiners, 8,000 so far this year. Total membership is 430,000. A recruitment and retention taskforce had been re-established.

• Martin Forde QC had written to confirm that his report is finalised and is being legally checked. It is important to note that only the sections about the truth of the allegations in the 2020 leaked report and the structure, culture and practices of the party can be published yet, the section on the circumstances of the leak has to be held back for legal reasons.

• The backlog project has virtually cleared the 10,000 undealt with disciplinary complaints that had been uncovered. 97.2% had now been dealt with. The new independent complaints process was going to come into force very soon.

• National Women’s Conference had been a great success.

• A new membership system to for CLPs and branches to use would be online in the late summer. Interim workarounds had been developed following the cyber incident and David would update CLPs about this.

• Extra staff resource had been put into the London regional team due to all the out selections.

• Training on recognising Islamophobia and other measures were being implemented in response to Labour Muslim Network’s report.

We agreed to add Derby North and Bolsover to the first tranche of 14 parliamentary selections agreed at the recent Organisation Committee meeting.

Keir Starmer opened his Leader’s report by paying tribute to the decades of achievement of NEC colleague Margaret Beckett, who has announced she is retiring as an MP at the next General Election. Other matters raised by Keir in his report included:

• Ukraine. There should have been tougher sanctions against Russia years ago. There is far too much Russian oligarch money and property in London and the Government’s six-month registration deadline is a ridiculous loophole. The Government has been too slow, too mean, and too narrow in allowing in Ukrainian refugees. Keir had met the Belarussian opposition, the ambassadors and delegations from Finland and Sweden, and visited Estonia to meet UK and other NATO forces. Extensive talks were going on between Labour and Germany’s SPD.

• The P&O scandal. P&O was contemptuous of the law and Parliament. The loophole they exploited has been there for years and the Government was warned about by Karl Turner MP two years ago.

• The Spring Statement. People face the worst fall in living standards for seventy years, high inflation and a crunch on benefits and wages and a National Insurance rise. The Chancellor is deeply cynical and has failed to rise to the occasion, is a "low tax" Chancellor putting up taxes and is not helping the people who most need help. Labour’s alternative energy offer, funded by a windfall tax on oil and gas profits, would take 600ドル off the bills of those who most need it.

• He was looking forward to five weeks on the road campaigning in the local elections.

Morgan McSweeney, Elections Director, presented on the local elections, which cover 164 councils including all 32 in London, all 32 in Scotland and all 22 in Wales. Labour will have over 6,000 candidates. Labour and the Tories are in a similar place in the polls to the previous time these seats were contested in 2018. Labour has 30 target councils in England and Wales, a mixture of potential gains and ones where we are fighting a defensive battle, and these councils have an eclectic mix of local political situations. The STV voting system in Scotland means every council is likely to be hung, but it would be a game changer if Labour could come second in national vote share across Scotland.

Morgan said all his conversations with predecessors and sister parties had led to the same conclusions. Successful campaigns focus on the voters, on persuasion of swing voters not just mobilisation of core supporters, and on decisions based on data to make speedy, nimble, and targeted decisions.

Labour’s contact rate was up significantly in key wards.

Moving on to the General Election he said the scale of gains required, 125 seats just for a narrow majority, meant Labour had no choice but to try to win everyone, everywhere. No assumptions could be made about any category of voters, all were now volatile. The most volatile were those voters who had lost most from globalisation, who tended to be people who had stayed in the towns they grew up in. Labour’s problem was that in the two hugely important referendums, on Scottish Independence and Brexit, we had been the party of the status quo when lots of previously Labour voters had wanted change, i.e. "Yes" in Scotland, "Leave" everywhere. Our messaging about respect includes respecting the choices made by these voters and is essential to winning. Morgan emphasised there is no route to victory without significant gains in Scotland.

He said that while some CLPs have very good levels of activity, there are others where the party needs to be reactivated.

National security is the huge contextual difference from 2018, now voters trust Keir’s stance on Ukraine, whereas in 2018 they didn’t trust Labour’s position on the Salisbury poisonings. Now we were spending 1ドル million on trainee organisers while then we were spending it on a failed music festival.

Tom Lillywhite presented the party’s digital strategy. This included countering online disinformation and using social media to understand target voters and understanding how content spreads. All the party’s online content is now evaluated using randomised control trials. There is a digital roadmap to get us election ready. Easily localised content was being provided to candidates and CLPs.

Finally, we voted to proscribe three organisations. Socialist Labour Network is simply a merger of two already proscribed organisations, Labour Against the Witch hunt and Labour In Exile Network. This was passed by 19 votes to 11. Labour Left Alliance has attacked the involvement of JLM in providing antisemitism training, is affiliated to and encouraged its supporters to join LATW and LIEN and uses the PayPal account of LATW to process its membership subscriptions and affiliation fees. This was passed by 20 votes to 11. Alliance for Workers’ Liberty actually has quite a good stance on antisemitism and was recommended for proscription for wholly different reasons: it is a revolutionary socialist party that was registered as a political party and stood candidates against Labour until it deregistered in 2015 and entered into the Labour Party, but has kept its own programme, principles and policy, branches, and distinctive and separate propaganda. This was passed by 20 votes to 11. I spoke and voted in favour of all three proscriptions.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 25th January, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of disciplinary panels the proceedings are confidential:

Complaints and Disciplinary Committee

Equalities Committee

Organisation Committee

Development Fund Panel

Boundary Review Working Group

2 meetings of the GRT Working Group

4 Disputes Panels

NEC-led local government selection panels in Newham, Sandwell and Walsall

NEC Report – 25th January 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2022年1月25日 22:22:00 +0000

The January NEC meeting was mercifully short compared to some recent ones, at "just" five and a quarter hours.

Keir and Angela had to send their apologies due to the urgent statement about Ukraine in the House of Commons.

There was a poignant moment at the beginning of the meeting when obituaries to recently deceased comrades included former party Treasurer and Unite Deputy General Secretary Jack Dromey and Leo Beckett, much-loved husband and adviser to our NEC colleague Margaret and a formidable political operator in his own right.

We heard an update on implementation of the EHRC report. The new Independent Review Board, which reviews NEC disciplinary decisions, is now set up, but the recruitment process for the new Independent Complaints Board (ICB) is still being finalised. The new independent disciplinary process will therefore be up and running in March. The EHRC has moved Labour from monthly to quarterly reporting, and if all goes well the final monitoring point will be December 2022.

Anneliese Dodds updated us on work she is leading on tackling Islamophobia.

David Evans apologised that the Forde Report had been delayed again. A letter from Martin Forde states clearly that there has been no political interference and the delay is because the report is still being written. We were told it has been very nearly finalised.

Tom Webb, Director of Policy and Research, introduced a paper on The National Policy Forum (NPF) – pathway to the manifesto. This set out the framework and timetable for NPF activity in 2022 and 2023. There will be elections for new NPF reps in the summer. The September NEC will agree procedural guidelines for the final stage NPF meeting, which will be held in Q4 if a May 2023 election looks on the cards, or in summer 2023 if a later election seems more likely. A decision on this date will be taken in May. Six new policy commissions are being set up, to reflect the six themes of the Stronger Together policy review. These are listed below with their co-convenors:

1. Better jobs and better work – Rachel Reeves MP and Andy Kerr

2. Safe and secure communities – Yvette Cooper MP and James Asser

3. Public services that work from the start –Wes Streeting MP and Mark Ferguson

4. A green and digital future – Ed Miliband MP and Margaret Beckett

5. A future where families comes first – Bridget Phillipson MP and Diana Holland

6. Britain in the world – David Lammy MP and Michael Wheeler

Gavin Sibthorpe of the GMB was elected as the new Co-Convenor of the Joint Policy Committee.

David Evans gave his General Secretary’s report and made the obvious point that everything the party did was focused on the marginal constituencies needed to get us to 326 seats in the Commons. For the May elections there were target local authorities that aligned with parliamentary marginals. These would be challenging elections with a difficult base line for Labour. Pleasingly, more people are out campaigning and making more canvassing contacts than in recent years. Membership is now 434,000. That’s similar to late 2019 and not the haemorrhaging being speculated about on social media. In fact, membership has had an uptick in recent weeks due to the bad news afflicting the Tories. The cyber incident meant Member Centre is down so staff have had to develop work arounds and manual processes. A large number of join requests are being processed manually.

David reported that the Organise to Win restructuring had achieved 66% of the cuts in spending required to balance the budget. Staffing had been reduced by a net 60 posts (some new posts had been created in the regional hubs), without any compulsory redundancies. Non-staff costs were being reduced. The Party was on track for a balanced budget and a war chest for the General Election campaign.

A strong technical submission had been made to the Boundary Commission on the new parliamentary boundaries. Reselection trigger ballots had started, and six MPs had already been reselected, with another 50 processes underway. 350 people were being trained by the Future Candidates Programme. The new selections paper would deliver excellent candidates.

The party was implementing an action plan on diversity and inclusion.

Work on implementing the Liverpool Report is progressing well, led by Sheila Murphy, who is working to set up campaign structures and improve governance and probity measures in the City Council Labour Group. The number of complaints about members in Liverpool is falling.

I asked for a clear statement that we would have nothing to do with pacts, deals or alliances and that we were focused on winning a Labour majority government. I was pleased that both David and Shabana Mahmood, the National Campaign Coordinator, confirmed that and said there would be no deals with any other party and we would stand in every seat. Decisions about targeting resources would be driven by our own priority of getting a majority Labour government, not what other parties were up to.

After David’s report, we dealt with the papers on the new system for parliamentary selections. The NEC will longlist candidates in each constituency, in order to both increase diversity and help underrepresented groups get a shot at standing, and to carry out due diligence and remove unsuitable candidates before the process, rather than have to get people to stand down once they are selected and the media exposes things from their past. There will be a spending cap (1,000ドル in the smallest CLPs up to 3,500ドル in the largest) for the first time, and a far shorter process, lasting only five weeks. Both measures are aimed at making the process more accessible to people with less money and time.

A range of amendments had been tabled. Some were withdrawn, and many others accepted by the staff. Ann Black wanted an even lower spending cap of 500ドル but didn’t persuade any of the rest of us of this. However, Ann’s proposal to limit nomination rights on the party, as opposed to affiliate side, to geographical branches, and not allow the new equalities branches (Women’s branches etc) to nominate was passed by 19 votes to 13. There was a unanimous vote to require a minimum of 50% women to each shortlist, rather than the "gender balanced" shortlist proposed in the original paper, which would have reserved half the places on the shortlist for men. We couldn’t reach a consensus on whether membership lists should be provided to all longlisted candidates or only to those who have been shortlisted, so this will be resolved after the meeting.

We then heard a report on elections from Elections Director Morgan McSweeney. He warned that the Tories could swap leader and call a very early General Election. He had been interviewing the Labour directors and campaign coordinators of every General Election campaign from 1987 to 2019 to learn what had worked and what hadn't. But he said the nature of the competition had changed dramatically. In the 1960s 87% of voters stayed with the same party in every General Election. In the 1980s 79% still did. But in the four General Elections from 2005-2017 only 40% of voters stayed with the same party in all four. Volatility has become huge, so whereas campaigns used to be focused on turnout they now have to be focused on persuasion. The party has invested in dashboards so that data can be tracked very closely, and in a big overhaul of digital campaigning. The local elections are only 100 days away, but Morgan elaborated on David’s figures about doorstep activity and said canvassing stats showed higher activity than in any year since records had started being kept in the same format in 2016. He concluded that this was encouraging but there was a lot more to do, with Saturday's national campaign day on the cost of living being a key member mobilisation date.

Chief Whip Alan Campbell MP then joined us to report on Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from the PLP. He said Jeremy had been suspended on 18^th November 2020 regarding a breach of the PLP Code of Conduct regarding his remarks following the publication of the EHRC Report on antisemitism. Alan’s predecessor Nick Brown had written to Jeremy on 23^rd November 2020 and published the letter due to the intense public interest in the case. The letter asked Jeremy to

1) Unequivocally apologise for his comments about the EHRC report

2) Comply with a request to remove or edit his Facebook post about the EHRC report

3) Agree to cooperate fully on the party’s implementation of the EHRC recommendations

As yet, Jeremy has not done any of these three things. Alan said he was happy to meet Jeremy to receive his answers.

Ian Murray of the FBU and Nadia Jama then moved a motion calling on the on the Chief Whip to review his decision and arrange for the Parliamentary whip to be immediately restored to Jeremy Corbyn. This was defeated by 23 votes to 14 with one abstention.

Laura Pidcock and Nadia Jama then moved a motion trying to reopen the question of the four organisations proscribed in July 2021 and to re-examine what constitutes "support" for these organisations and to cease the "retrospective application of this rule". Executive Director of Legal Affairs Alex Barros-Curtis said the principles of natural justice were applied to these cases. Members were served with a notice of allegations and their response to these allegations was considered by the NEC panels looking at these cases. On 20^th July 2021 four organisations had been deemed to be in contravention of Labour’s rules and support for them was deemed incompatible with Labour’s aims and values. The party is entitled legally to disassociate itself from organisations and people it considers inimical to its aims and values. The motion was defeated by 20 votes to 14 and the meeting came to an end.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 21^st November, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of disciplinary panels the proceedings are confidential:

Complaints and Disciplinary Sub-Committee

Organisation Sub-Committee

Boundary Review Working Group

Unconscious Bias Training

4 Disputes Panels

NEC Report – 25 November 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年11月26日 19:09:00 +0000

The November NEC meeting is the Away Day when we don’t tackle ordinary business but instead hear a series of strategic presentations from senior staff.

It isn’t very "Away" as we met at Labour’s Southside HQ in London, but it was the first time since the initial Covid lockdown, aside from conference, that we have held a primarily in person meeting, and that was enjoyable and useful in terms of being able to speak to each other and key staff in the margins of the meeting. In fact, the meeting was successfully run as a hybrid, with about two thirds of us in the room and the remainder on a Zoom call. Alice Perry as the new NEC Chair very ably made this work so that both in person and online attendees were all able to have their say, and the meeting concluded on time at just after 5.30pm, a mere seven hours including a lunch break and a fire alarm drill!

At the start of the meeting Alice notified the NEC that the long-awaited Forde Report would now be circulated at some point ahead of our next meeting in January. She also said that a motion from Laura Pidcock and Nadia Jama opposing the retrospective implementation of proscriptions of four organisations would be taken at the January meeting.

The first presentation was on the party’s Organise to Win restructuring. We were told that the party had achieved 80% of the 5ドル.5m savings it needed to make to balance its finances, and had reduced staffing from over 400 in April, to a more normal mid-term level of 320 now, through voluntary redundancies. The new structure would be finalised by January. The next set of priorities are parliamentary selections and reselections, the local elections in May (especially where these are in areas that are also marginal in the next General Election), developing new canvassing scripts, advising MPs on how to use their incumbency to defend their seats, transforming our digital campaigning, responding to the boundary review, and using an Organising Academy to increase the skills of specialist volunteers. I asked the party to prioritise recruiting more Regional Organisers as soon as we start increasing staffing in the run-up to the General Election.

We then heard about lessons from our sister party, the SPD’s, victory in Germany. They had held their nerve stuck to their plan even though they had been running third for most of the electoral cycle, and it paid off in the final weeks of the campaign. Everything had been focused on Olaf Scholz as Chancellor candidate and his competence and trustworthiness. German politics has been becoming increasingly volatile with fewer core voters for the two main parties, as in the UK. The SPD had a very clear narrative around three themes of Future, Respect and Europe, and a concise policy offer that was set out very early and not added to during the campaign. Two thirds of the campaign budget was spent on dominating the street battle with billboards (parties are allowed to flypost on street furniture in German elections). All materials offline and online kept to a very simple design with black and white photos and only one colour – reclaiming red. The campaign emphasised both change and reassurance and was strongly centralised. I said that whilst we cannot flypost on the streets we needed to improve quantity and quality of the UK version of this outdoor publicity, which is garden stake posters.

Anneliese Dodds presented on the internal culture of the party and our efforts to improve it. She outlined the new complaints process and new codes of conduct and training not just on antisemitism as required by the EHRC but also on Islamophobia and anti-black racism. She outlined steps being taken on harassment and trans awareness. Abuse of party staff was now a specific offence in the rules. We need to create a culture that is supportive of each other and what we are doing and achieving. Laura Pidcock said she felt the disciplinary actions being taken were alienating many members and were unfair, but I said that whilst there were cases where people had been administratively suspended for far too long because of the backlog of cases, we also had to prioritise justice for the victims of abuse and discrimination, particularly given that the EHRC had found us to have harassed our own Jewish members. I urged an end to the demonisation and hyperbolic criticism of Keir and David Evans, where there are exaggerated claims of purges and mischaracterisation of minor policy changes as though our leaders are Thatcherites.

We then heard a presentation about the local elections next May. 6470 council seats are being contested, including every seat in Birmingham, London, Scotland and Wales and a third of the seats in most metropolitan boroughs. When these seats were last fought in 2018 the vote share across the country had been quite good – 35% each for Lab and Con, 16% Lib Dem and 12% UKIP. Whilst Labour had gained a net 71 seats that year in England, this was driven by excellent results in London which offset losses in other areas. Labour had lost 133 seats in Scotland and 108 in Wales. Understandably the party is focusing resources on marginal wards in councils that could change control and which overlap with marginal parliamentary seats. I asked for reports to be given to us on the number of candidates fielded, so that we could ensure every voter had a chance to vote Labour and we didn’t fail to contest wards. I also asked for specific training, scripts and advice to be provided to areas where the main challenger to Labour is the Green Party, as this requires a different political response to areas where there is a straight fight between Labour and the Tories.

Then we were given a presentation about the General Election, talking us through the key metrics of activity that would be expected of candidates and CLPs in seats we need to gain to form a Labour Government. Keir emphasised the importance of due diligence and high-quality candidate selection as the recent Tory sleaze means every candidate will be under intense scrutiny. I asked for a clear twinning scheme where non-marginal seats would be linked to and given metrics for the support they would give a nearby marginal.

Finally, there was a fascinating presentation on the latest internal polling and focus group research by Deborah Mattinson. She talked us through the issues the public think are most important, and segmented the electorate and highlighted the groups of voters we have most chance of persuading to switch from Conservative to Labour.

After the Away Day presentations, there was a short business meeting that started poignantly with a minute’s silence in honour of the late Andy Howell. There was some to-ing and fro-ing about the NEC procedures for tabling late papers, which seemed to leave everyone satisfied. We renamed the Disputes Panel the Complaints and Disciplinary Sub Committee to make its role clearer. We delayed the start of next year’s internal elections by a week to 21 January to enable the deadlines for the National Policy Forum elections, which the unions want further consultation about, to be agreed at the Organisation Committee on 18 January. I successfully got the nomination thresholds reduced for the national committee elections for the new National Labour Students organisation, so that it will be easier for candidates to get on the ballot and members will get more choice and fewer uncontested elections.

The meeting ended on a high note with a very powerful exposition of the paper on NEC Aims and Objectives from Morgan McSweeney, Elections Director. Morgan said that after dealing with crucial internal issues the party now has to refocus externally on the voters. There could be a General Election at any time between now and 2 May 2024, and it isn’t clear on which boundaries as the new ones only get implemented on 1 July 2023. We need candidates who are insurgents and hungry to win, and the Labour rosette on a candidate needs to be seen by voters as a mark of quality. Both the standards and the diversity of our candidates can be increased. We need to revolutionise our digital campaigning. We have to change the whole way we work and campaign in order to build new coalitions of voters large enough to win a majority Labour government. The National Policy Forum process needs to be completed so that we are on a speedy pathway to an election-winning manifesto. And our culture needs to be transformed.

There was a half-hearted attempt to reopen the question about a moratorium on the retrospective application of the disciplinary action towards proscribed organisations, but as this was raised after the chair had declared the meeting closed, those of us present in person departed to the pub in good spirits, feeling it had been a focused and constructive meeting.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 17 September, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of Disputes Panels the proceedings are confidential:

Annual Conference including two NEC meetings and the NEC AGM

Equalities Committee

Disputes Panel main meeting

Organisation Committee

4 Disputes Panels

3 panels relating to local or regional issues

Boundary Review Working Group

NEC Report – 17 September 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年9月20日 15:12:00 +0000

The September NEC is always focussed on Annual Conference business. Whilst it was another long meeting, seven hours, it was curiously muted compared to recent meetings.

The meeting opened with a report on arrangements for conference from the Chair of the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC), Harry Donaldson. He said:

· CAC has agreed which motions are valid. 330 met the criteria (covering one subject only, under 250 words long and about policy, not organisation) out of 375 submitted.

· There are 50 subject areas that will go forward to the Priority Ballot, which decides which ones get debated.

· Reference Backs on National Policy Forum (NPF) reports have been submitted in writing and will be published in the CAC reports.

· The Emergency Resolutions deadline is noon on 23 September.

· 1179 CLP delegates and 259 from affiliated organisations have registered but some may drop out or fail passport checks.

· A total of 7,000 people will attend conference.

· There are at least 350 fringe events and 84 exhibitors.

· The Business Forum has raised 110,000ドル in income from business visitors, and a further 143,500ドル has been raised in sponsorship.

We then moved on to the main business of the meeting, agreeing our position on possible rule changes to be debated at Annual Conference. I was somewhat bemused by Momentum voting against even anodyne rule changes to tidy up things like deleting references to MEPs and the EPLP, despite the votes on rules they had indicated they found contentious being taken separately. Rule changes on toughening our stance towards members who litigate against the party were held over until the meeting on Friday 24 September for further consultation. Amendments from the floor saw the right of administratively suspended members to vote in OMOV ballots retained, and the number of officers of a Local Government Committee increased to 4 so that there is a quota of 2 women.

The new (not tabled at the July meeting) batch of non-contentious rule changes passed with 19 For, 9 Against, 1 Abstention.

A second batch of rule changes relate to the new independent disciplinary process for cases relating to protected characteristics, required by the EHRC Report. This was passed with 18 For, 8 Against, 1 Abstention. I was really disappointed that eight colleagues would vote against a change that is a legal requirement following the investigation into antisemitism.

The third batch of non-contentious changes already noted by the NEC in July passed 19 For, 4 Against, 3 Abstentions.

A rule change to codify STV (Single Transferable Vote) as the voting system for the ballot for the nine CLP reps on the NEC passed with 16 For, 8 Against, 3 Abstentions.

A consequent rule change to abolish NEC by-elections in the CLP section, as you can now just recount the previous STV ballot without the member who has stood down, was passed with 17 For, 9 Against, 3 Abstentions.

A rule change that prevents CLPs from affiliating to external organisations without NEC approval was passed with 19 For, 9 Against, 1 Abstention.

A rule change to place the longstanding practice of the General Secretary’s power to reject membership applications during the eight-week probationary period on a

contractual/rule-based footing was passed with 17 For, 9 Against, 1 Abstention.

An extensive rewrite of the membership rules to improve the processes around auto-exclusions, including giving those expelled under this process a right to appeal for the first time, was then debated, and at this point the meeting became a bit more tense. Questions were asked about the implementation of the July NEC’s decision to proscribe four organisations. This decision could not be revisited as we have a three-month rule – you can’t reopen NEC decisions until three months after they have been taken. The General Secretary said that he refuted that the proscriptions were being implemented factionally. I argued and the General Secretary agreed that proscriptions had to be applied retrospectively to evidence of support for an organisation before it was proscribed to have any meaning. We were informed that in contrast to the noise about them being generated on social media, only 57 letters had been sent to members alleging they supported proscribed organisations, and only 5 people had been expelled. Letters are not generated automatically, complaints come in and are then assessed, in 10 cases complaints have been dismissed and not proceeded with. Members accused of support for a proscribed organisation have an opportunity to refute the allegations.

There was a proposal to defer this rule change. It was defeated by 16 votes to 11.

Ann Black proposed an amendment to remove the retrospective nature of the proscriptions. This was defeated by 18 votes to 10.

The paper itself was passed by 20 votes to 9.

We then looked at rule changes submitted by CLPs and determined the NEC’s attitude to each one.

We agreed to ask Oxford East CLP to remit their proposal regarding BAME quotas on Council Cabinets in favour of an NEC alternative which would be more tightly worded for legal reasons.

A proposal for Annual Conference to have sovereignty over disciplinary decisions of the PLP Chief Whip was defeated by 18 votes to 9.

A proposal to elect the General Secretary in an OMOV ballot was defeated by 19 votes to 7 with 1 abstention.

A proposal to allow rule changes that are similar to a previous one to be considered after less than the current three-year rule was defeated by 17 votes to 7.

A proposal about members having absolute rights to free speech was defeated by 18 votes to 9.

A proposal to use STV in the elections for every section of the NEC except the union and socialist society ones was defeated by 16 votes to 9. The argument against this is that STV in blocks of 5 or fewer seats does not produce proportional results.

A proposal to give CLP EC’s more power over by-election selections and last-minute parliamentary selections was defeated by 18 votes to 9.

A proposal to give a minimum seven-day window to apply for parliamentary selections was defeated by 17 votes to 8. Sometimes the election timetable doesn’t allow this much time.

A proposal for spending limits in leadership ballots to be in the rule book rather than decided at the start of each election was defeated by 17 votes to 8.

A proposal to limit donations from any person or organisation other than affiliates to the party was defeated without being put to a vote, as this would present an existential threat to our funding, including ending 7ドル.7m of Government grants via "Short Money" etc. I spoke on this item and urged that we should celebrate individual high value donors giving as much as they can afford to Labour, rather than make negative assumptions about their motives.

Keir then gave his Leader’s report, covering his visits round the country to speak to people who had stopped voting Labour, the Afghanistan crisis, the Workplace Taskforce policy announcements, and preparations for Annual Conference. He said he wants a benefits system that works much better than Universal Credit, which unfairly takes 75p from the first additional 1ドル you earn. On Social Care he said Labour’s policy stance is to:

· Prevent people going into care homes for as long as possible.

· Have a Home First principle.

· Give the workforce proper terms and conditions and job security.

· Have those with the broadest shoulders (people with income from property, dividends, stocks and shares) pay, not working people.

Keir refuted as nonsense allegations that Marsha De Cordova had resigned as Shadow Equalities Minister over lack of progress on racial justice policies.

He said Annual Conference was the first opportunity to look beyond the Covid crisis at what kind of future we wanted, one where we deal with the inequalities exposed by Covid and tackle the climate crisis.

On disciplinary cases he said he was in a fight to rid Labour of antisemitism, not a fight against any section of the party.

After Keir’s report I was delighted that we unanimously approved new national structures for Disabled Members and Labour Students. I served on both NEC working groups, as a disabled member of the NEC and a former National Secretary of Labour Students, and it was really good that in both cases a consensus was reached. I thanked Angela Rayner for her and her team urging a compromise national committee structure for the new Labour Students organisation, which had helped ensure a consensus was reached.

Angela’s Deputy Leader’s report focused on the way the Tories are making things tougher for ordinary people through the National Insurance hike and Universal Credit cuts. She praised union involvement in the Workplace Taskforce. Asked about party unity she said we all need to accept everyone in the party is motivated by wanting to change the country for the better. When we can’t reach consensus, we need to consider whether the action or policy we are backing will help get Labour into power.

David Evans gave his General Secretary’s report. He said the restructuring process within the party was halfway through. The voluntary redundancy scheme for staff had been closed. More that 100 staff had applied but some were in key roles, so their departure had not been agreed. The process was paused while leavers were being supported. A full financial review after conference would determine the next stage. The gap between the savings from voluntary redundancies and the 5ドル.5m savings target was narrow enough that he had assured the staff unions that there would be no need for compulsory redundancies as it could be bridged through reducing non-staff costs, managing vacancies and raising income. Support for Young Labour would be in the new staff structure.

On the Forde Report he said the party was now expecting to be given the two sections that could be published in late October or November. He said the issuing of a Notice of Investigation (NOI) to the Chair of Young Labour had been due to an error, and a full review had revealed it was because of processes not being followed properly. There was a backlog of 5,200 outstanding complaints being worked through. The Executive Director of Legal Affairs, Alex Barros-Curtis, said that the process of going through the backlog would take 6 months and was in its 7^th week. External additional staff had been trained in Labour’s rules and processes to do this. 3,000 cases had been assessed so far, of which 30% had been closed at assessment stage as they did not merit investigation. The NOI to Jess Barnard had not been signed off properly but it was an innocent mistake by the person concerned. The tone of letters had been amended and staff reminded never to send them outside office hours.

Alex Barros-Curtis was asked about the new submission to the EHRC from Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), who have claimed Labour has disproportionally expelled Jewish members. He said the party utterly refutes the submission made JVL: "Particularly that we disproportionately target them, and also that we ignore any complaints we have of theirs. Indeed, those complaints are actually in the backlog - so will be dealt with as part of the clearance project, which will mean these are resolved as swiftly as possible."

The meeting closed with swift agreement of a series of reports on the Business Board, Women’s Conference, Sexual Harassment Procedures & Code of Conduct, and the National Policy Forum and Joint Policy Committee.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 21 July, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of Disputes Panels the proceedings are confidential:

· 2 meetings of the Disabled Members Structures Working Group

· 3 Disputes Panels

· Boundary Review Working Group

· Briefing on the Boundary Review

· Development Panel

NEC Report – 21 July 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年7月22日 16:09:00 +0000

The July NEC has a reputation for having a heavy agenda every year, and this was no exception, lasting nine and a quarter hours on one of the hottest days of the year.

The most important items in my view were the reports from the General Secretary and Executive Director of Finance about Labour’s financial situation and the restructuring this necessitates.

David Evans said that since his appointment he had been preparing a restructuring called Organise to Win, aimed at getting the Labour Party into shape to fight the next General Election but also putting in on a sustainable financial footing. This is the first full scale review of Labour’s professional machine since 2006, so long overdue. The party was traumatised by four General Election defeats and by 2019 it had lost its reputation for campaigning innovation and faced a far more modern Tory machine, particularly in digital campaigning. Structural problems had been laid bare by the May local elections. The antisemitism crisis and legal challenges associated with it meant we are spending more on legal action than on campaigning, and ten times more than we used to. Much of the review was informed by pro bono work by Lord (Bob) Kerslake and other financial and organisational structure experts. The new structure will have a simplified hub and spoke model with support services in the centre and at three regional resource hubs, and as much campaigning resource as possible put out into the regions and nations. It will foster collaborative working and enable staff to develop specialisms and become experts. Resources will be focussed on communications, digital campaigning and field operations. To make it financially sustainable it will be lean, with sadly 90 redundancies needed, but strong enough to be built back from as we approach the General Election. Cultural change internally away from factionalism will be driven by rewarding good behaviour and a focus on diversity and inclusion. Sign off processes will be streamlined to try to reduce the risk averse culture that has developed. A flatter management structure is more appropriate for any political campaign organisation. All operations will be guided by the electoral strategy.

The Executive Director Finance provided more detail on the financial situation. As well as the vastly increased legal costs budget, staffing had remained at General Election levels ever since 2015 due to the three elections in quick succession and the unique circumstances of the pandemic. Historically all political parties have lower donations, lower membership and fewer staff in the mid years of the electoral cycle, and Labour needs to get back to a sustainable number of core staff in the midterm. The legal spend will gradually reduce as the backlog of disciplinary cases is dealt with. The party had lost 22% of the "Short Money" that funds the policy function of HM Opposition because this is based on a formula relating to electoral performance so it was cut due to the seats lost in 2019. The cancellation of the 2020 Annual Conference had removed the main source of commercial income for that year. Membership always spikes at a General Election or Leadership Election then drifts down between such events. Even so, membership income in 2021 was the same as in 2019, it was only lower than the record 2020 level. Plans were in place for growing both high value one off donations, smaller regular donations and membership. Treasurer, Diana Holland, noted that whilst the party has a deficit it needs to reduce by making savings, its long-term financial position is far stronger than before 2010 as it has no debt anymore.

David also reported on the boundary review process, the byelections in Chesham & Amersham and Batley & Spen, and the successful Women’s Conference. On the long-awaited Forde Report he said he was pushing Martin Forde QC to complete and publish by early autumn the two sections of the report which don’t potentially prejudice the ICO’s investigation. The sections on the truth or not of the content of the leaked report last year, and on the culture and practices of the party, could be published if they are ready, but the section on the circumstances of the leak need to wait until the ICO has reported.

Bespoke unconscious bias training was being rolled out to staff and the NEC. The NEC would continue to meet online until its meetings at conference. CLP meetings could now either be held in person or online, with guidance on Covid safety being issued.

As at previous meetings there were questions from his supporters about Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from the PLP. David emphasised that the Chief Whip has put the letter to Jeremy with its three criteria for the whip being restored into the public domain. Those criteria have not been met yet.

We also heard reports from the Leader and Deputy Leader.

Keir explained that the three days he had spent on the ground in Blackpool listening to voters was part of a pattern that would continue around the country through the summer. Each visit would show the leadership getting outside Westminster and would involve interaction with local media and community groups. Keir said that Labour was on the attack on every level against the Tories on Covid as the Delta variant was "the Johnson variant", spreading rapidly due to Boris’ failure to take effective action, and the Tories were causing the country a summer of chaos and confusion.

It was disappointing that some colleagues again chose to waste their unique opportunity to engage constructively with Keir with rude and relentlessly negative questions, including asking the same ones about Jeremy Corbyn that David Evans had already answered.

Angela Rayner’s report focussed on the campaigning Labour would be doing over the summer to expose the Tories and set out our contrasting vision.

We agreed a report on Liverpool from a panel led by Sir David Hanson, which dealt with the Labour Party aspects of the fallout from the arrest of the former Mayor and subsequent Caller Report into the City Council. Having interviewed 60 of the key figures in the local party, it was clear that there was a bullying and toxic culture, a lack of scrutiny of the council, failure to declare interests etc. The panel’s 32 recommendations include dedicated party staff support for Liverpool, the NEC to run the panel process for council candidates, vetting, a code of practice and declarations of interest, antisemitism training for candidates and party officers, fast-tracking of all complaints about Liverpool members, refocusing the Local Campaign Forum on local issues, and reconstitution of the city’s CLPs so they all have a branch and GC model and scrutiny of councillors will be the same across the city.

I raised the related issues around Liverpool Jewish women MPs Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger being driven out of the party by antisemitism and said we would not have fully dealt with antisemitism until they felt able to re-join.

We then moved on to consider a general paper on how we assess the proscription of groups that are not compatible with Labour’s values, and four specific cases. I spoke in favour of the proscriptions. I was disappointed that some NEC members argued against proscription. I do not understand why more mainstream parts of the Hard Left cannot see the damage being done to their own reputation, let alone the party’s, by tolerating groups that minimise or deny the existence of antisemitism, or that are rival revolutionary communist parties seeking to infiltrate Labour. It was clear to me that Socialist Appeal is an entryist group, one of two lineal successors to the Militant Tendency, that Resist is already part of the steering committee of TUSC, a rival political party, and that Resist, Labour in Exile Network and Labour Against the Witch-hunt all oppose the party’s efforts to deal with antisemitism. None of these organisations belong anywhere near the Labour Party.

The main paper was approved by 22 votes to 11.

The proscription of Labour in Exile Network was approved by 22 votes to 10.

The proscription of Labour Against the Witch-hunt was approved by 22 votes to 10.

The proscription of Socialist Appeal was approved by 20 votes to 12.

The proscription of Resist was approved by 23 votes to 9.

We noted that membership of the party was now 466,000.

On Annual Conference we heard that the "Plan A" was a normal physical conference. If Covid necessitated, it then we could have a socially distant main hall with delegates only. Delegates who need to self-isolate could be replaced. Further fallback plans were for a hybrid online and physical conference or even a fully online one. Reference Backs on parts of National Policy Forum reports will now need to be sent in in advance of conference rather than from the floor. Replacement movers and seconders for composite motions will be allowed if the delegates from the initial organisations are pinged and have to self-isolate.

We agreed the outlines of the new Independent Complaints Process required by the EHRC as part of our action to stamp out antisemitism. It was noted that every action in the party’s EHRC Action Plan has been completed or is ongoing except this. The new process will apply to all disciplinary cases relating to the legally protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation), not just to antisemitism cases. Contrary to one NEC member’s question on an earlier item, Marxism is not a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act! The process requires further refinement and consultation with affected stakeholders before rule changes are agreed at Conference. Currently the NEC’s Disputes Panels, with an independent lawyer giving advice, hear cases where all the evidence is in writing. The National Constitutional Committee hears cases that need an oral hearing and appeals. Its rulings are final.

Under the new system the NEC Disputes Panels will still meet but where there are cases involving protected characteristics a lawyer from an Independent Review Panel (IRP) will be able to veto their judgements and refer them to an Independent Appeal Board (IAB) if they do not comply with the rules, the law, and new principles of independence. The IAB will consist of 4 lawyers, 4 lay members and 4 HR or regulatory experts, one person from each of these categories will serve on each decision-making panel. An IAB panel will also hear cases that would previously have gone to the NCC but involve a protected characteristic. The IRP will also have the power to undertake audits of the disciplinary process. IAB members will be appointed by a Recruitment Panel established by the General Secretary or their nominee.

Because of case law about the right to freedom of assembly and association under Article 11 of the Human Rights Act it isn’t legally possible to make the process totally independent from the Labour Party. The proposal is financially practicable and legally watertight and meets the EHRC’s requirements.

We were informed that it will take a further six months to clear the backlog of disciplinary cases.

We ended the meeting by agreeing a new Code of Conduct on Confidentiality by 19 votes to 10, and then there was a high note of unanimity where we agreed the very important Code of Conduct on Islamophobia, which incorporates the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims Definition of Islamophobia, unanimously.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 25 May, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of Disputes Panels the proceedings are confidential:

· Equalities Committee – 1 June

· Organisation Committee – 8 June

· Disputes Panel – 8 June

· Health and Social Care Policy Commission – 26 May, 22 June

· National Policy Forum – 6 July

· Working Group on student structures – 8 July

· Disabled Members Structures Working Group – 15 July

· Boundary Review Working Group – 6 meetings and 3 regional consultation events

· And a Disputes Panel hearing

NEC Report - 25 May 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年5月26日 17:30:00 +0000

The NEC met in sombre and serious mood on 25 May, with an obvious priority of reflecting on the 6 May election results and considering the dramatic improvements and changes that will need to be made to respond to the message the electorate has sent us.

You can read my own analysis and response to the election results here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starmer-has-one-shot-to-save-labour-from-national-irrelevance-qqltzcj3f and here https://labourlist.org/2021/05/how-successful-was-labour-in-the-may-2021-elections/

Keir Starmer’s report opened with a pledge, on the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement, that a Labour Government would bring in a Race Equality Act to address structural racism.

Keir welcomed Anneliese Dodds (new frontbench rep) and Angela Eagle (new PLP rep) to the NEC.

He provided a candid, balanced and sobering summary of the election results and how serious a setback they had been, before setting out five policy themes that Labour will now be promoting:

1) Restructuring a broken economy towards long-term investment rather than short-term shareholder return.

2) Transforming the way we deliver public services so they are more integrated and less silo-ised.

3) World class education and skills.

4) Radical devolution.

5) Modernisation of Britain.

He said the party needs a complete change of culture, so it is facing the voters at all times and less internally focused. We need to transform and modernise our campaigning structure in order to be able to transform and modernise the country.

Keir warned the General Election could be as early as May 2023 and we face the immediate challenge of a byelection in Batley & Spen.

During the Q&A I responded to claims by Momentum-supporting members of the NEC that members had been demoralised and therefore not campaigned by saying that this was not borne out by my personal experience as a council candidate or, in a different ward, as a ward organiser, in both cases I had seen increased levels of volunteering. Nor was it borne out by the data collected nationally about the number of canvassing contacts made, which Keir confirmed was higher than in the previous set of local elections, even with Covid affecting the way we could campaign. I asked Keir to make sure the policy review developed policies that would appeal to segments of the electorate who have moved away from us, particularly older voters, who we can’t win a General Election without winning back, as they are an increasing share of the population and have high propensity to turnout.

Answering a total of 16 questions, some of them disappointingly couched in less than comradely tones, Keir emphasised that policies from past manifestoes are never ruled out, but after several defeats you can’t just pick up the old manifesto you lost on as the starting point. We needed a simplified and focussed policy offer as there had just been too much for voters to believe was deliverable in 2019.

He emphasised the need to reach out to both rural voters and older voters, where an existing trend towards Labour voting falling off by age had become profoundly worse in 2019. He said we needed policies for older voters that would guarantee security and dignity in old age and wanted a discussion in detail about this at a future NEC meeting.

Asked about the Gaza conflict he reiterated Labour’s support for a two-state solution and referred the NEC to Lisa Nandy’s balanced statements which strongly condemned breaches of international law and human rights by either side (https://labour.org.uk/category/lisa-nandy/).

Following Keir, Angela Rayner also gave her report, talking about how we reconnect with voters we have lost and about her policy priority of addressing fire and rehire and insecure work in her new role as Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work.

Executive Director of Elections Anna Hutchinson took us through a detailed statistical analysis of the 6 May results.

General Secretary David Evans covered the byelections in Batley & Spen and Chesham & Amersham in his report, and the possibility of one in Delyn as the Conservative MP has been suspended for six weeks.

He reported on the work of the party’s internal Diversity and Inclusion Board, including the rollout of unconscious bias training.

He said publication of the Forde Report was still postponed, to avoid even partial disclosure prejudicing an ICO investigation. He was doing everything he could to get it published.

Membership is now 489,000, which remains very high by historic standards. A membership retention strategy is being developed.

The party was concerned about the risk of potential loss of income if Covid leads to restrictions on the format of Annual Conference.

Both David and Keir were repeatedly and tediously asked the same question about restoration of the whip to Jeremy Corbyn and David advised those NEC members who repeatedly raise this to write to the Chief Whip.

After David’s report we supported an amendment from Ellen Morrison to the paper about future arrangements for CLP and branch meetings to keep open hybrid online and offline options as online meetings are more accessible for many people. All meetings remain online until the end of July when the situation will be reviewed.

Anneliese Dodds spoke about the policy review she is now leading. This will produce a clear offer in time for a 2023 early General Election. It will show our core values of equality, security and ambition for our country. The review will work in step with and not duplicate the work of the National Policy Forum (NPF) and its commissions. The NPF tries to be encyclopaedic and develop policy on everything, whereas the review will only look at a small number of key areas. It will be future looking, trying to generate a Labour vision of the UK in 2030 and counterpoise that with a vision of what the UK will look like by 2030 if the Tories stay in charge. We want to create a country that is more equal, more secure and more ambitious about what it can achieve.

We were then given an update on the NPF’s processes. Equalities issues had been better integrated into the work of each Policy Commission. There will be a full NPF meeting on 6 July. The Policy Commissions were proving consensual and constructive. NPF Chair Ann Black said she wanted to harness the positive energy around policy making to give the NPF a more campaigning role.

Just to confuse things there is also an ongoing review of policy development. The deadline for CLPs and affiliates to make submissions is 24 June, then the NEC will agree proposals for a new way of making policy and put these to conference.

We signed off standing orders and a code of conduct for the National Women’s Conference.

We also signed off procedures for the trigger ballots and selections for Mayoral elections. Mish Rahman from Momentum proposed the trigger threshold should be 1/3 of branches or affiliates rather than 1⁄2 (i.e. that it should be easier to force a full reselection ballot). This was defeated by 19 votes to 10. He proposed that the Organisation Committee should have to sign off any decision by the General Secretary to rescind endorsement of a candidate if something damaging to the party emerges about them, This was defeated by 16 votes to 14.

Nadia Jama from Momentum tabled a motion calling for the Leader of Sheffield City Council Labour Group to be elected in an OMOV pilot by party members rather than by the Labour councillors. This was defeated by 20 votes to 11.

The meeting ended on a forward-looking note with agreement of a paper on an impressive Future Candidates Programme of training for up to 350 potential parliamentary candidates.

Since the previous NEC meeting on 11 February, I have also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of Disputes Panels the proceedings are confidential:

Equalities Committee – 4 March – dealing with EHRC Action Plan, All Women Shortlists, Women’s Conference, GRT working group, candidate diversity

Boundary Review Working Group – 9 March

Disputes Panel – 11 March

Organisation Committee – 11 March – dealing with EHRC Action Plan, new codes of conduct, BAME Structures, GRT working group, regional rules and standing orders

Working Group on student structures – 12 March

Health and Social Care Policy Commission – 15 March and 27 April

Full day training on Decision Making – 9 April

Training on antisemitism – 15 April

4 Disputes Panels hearings

In memory of my mum

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年4月30日 19:52:00 +0000

A few words about my mum, Nan Akehurst (nee Davies), who passed away suddenly today.

Mum was quite a character. She was fun, caring, thoughtful, arty, creative, wacky, and could be incredibly stubborn, illogical (she said logic came from maths, and she hated maths), and hot-tempered.

She was a baby boomer, whose mum and dad had put off starting a family for five years because they were busy doing their bit in WW2 as a casualty clearing station nurse and a Lance Bombardier in the 11^th Survey Regiment. Back in civilian life her dad, George, returned to his teaching career, while her mum, Molly, cared for the family. Baby Nan was born in Northfleet, Kent, in June 1946. She owed her unusual first name to Scottish ancestry on her mum’s side, her maternal grandfather William McKenzie was born in Dumbarton but had travelled to Kent to find work and ended up as the Labour Mayor of Gravesend.

Mum’s childhood was marred by a series of painful operations and long stays in Great Ormond Street hospital for reconstructive surgery because she and her brother were born with a rare genetic anomaly that meant they only had one ear, and this obviously meant in later life her hearing was affected. Tragically her younger brother Billy died in a road accident when he was 11 and mum was 13. She became a rebellious teenager – school reports she kept cannot have been comfortable reading for her parents, nowadays we would say she had PTSD. Her dad’s promotions in his teaching career saw the family move first to Coventry, where my mum liked her short time at the gleaming new Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School, where her dad was a housemaster, and remembered crossing acres of still bombed out streets to get there (this would have been around 1957). Her dad’s promotion to be a secondary head teacher saw the family move back to Kent and settle in Canterbury. Mum didn’t enjoy her new school, Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar, and the loss of her brother a year later clearly had a big effect on her for a long time. She only really opened up to me about how traumatic it was a few years ago.

Mum left the Langton after a rather mixed bag of O Levels and spent a couple of years at Canterbury College of Art. It sounds like incredibly good fun, and she kept in touch for decades afterwards with her favourite teachers, but there were no jobs at the end of it. A highlight was that she designed a tie for Mick Jagger which she says he wore on stage.

After art college there was a brief period living away from home in Kingston-upon-Thames and commuting into a very dull civil service job in a tax office near The Strand.

London life didn’t appeal so mum ended up back in Canterbury and eventually found a role that really suited her as a fashion buyer in the boutique section – the clothes for younger women – at Martin’s, the main women’s wear shop in town. She also worked at Riceman's and Lenleys, department stores that were features of Canterbury shopping. The fashion job was in the late ‘60s.

1960s mum was described by her younger cousins to me today as "cool and groovy".

By this time my mum had developed a very clear set of ideas about what she liked and what she didn’t like. She liked the Stones and despised the Beatles. She liked to be stylish, and this was achieved whether through careful saving for certain key outfits, or an incredible eye for bargains at sales and jumble sales. She liked music in a minor key and with soul to it – Motown, Ella Fitzgerald, Georgie Fame, blues, heavy Russian classical composers like Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. She liked equally soulful art: Van Gogh (who she identified with because of his missing ear), Hieronymous Bosch (thanks for the nightmares when you showed me his pictures of hell as little kid mum!), Fra Filippo Lippi. This meant on a later trip to Italy when we took her to Florence we got stuck for nearly an hour analysing one picture in the Uffizi. She liked cooking and eating spectacular meals, often waking at the crack of dawn to start preparing them, with a range from traditional roasts to French style sauces and often a choice of several hand made deserts. The Christmas parties she hosted were legendary. The final year of her life seemed to involve a lot of confit de canard. To go with the food, she liked wine – it had to be red, or if white, of a dryness akin to gargling pebbles. No fruit flavours were allowed to get in the way. Gin was also on the list of household essentials. She liked interior decoration, the house seemed to get a makeover several times a decade. She loved to read, particularly historical novels.

She did not like TV (until relatively recently – she didn’t allow one in the house until the late ‘80s), or sport, or technology, pizza, or pasta.

At the start of the 1970s she met my dad, Tony Akehurst, at the Bridge Country Club at a jazz gig, mum was working behind the bar there. They were together for the rest of her life, marrying in 1971. They would have had their 50^th wedding anniversary this October. Dad was 8 years older than mum, and a farm boy from Barham in East Kent. I think he was blown away by mum’s sophisticated and fiery persona, and he provided the perfect foil for her – calm, laid back, practical. They made a brilliant team as parents to me (born 1972) and my younger siblings Sam (1974) and Ella (1976) and their loyalty and affection for each other and us has been just incredible.

Financially the 1970s were very tough for mum and dad, with mum at home with three little kids and dad in not very well-paid jobs, particularly after he returned to the family farm. They lived with my grandparents until I was two, and then in a draughty 1919 bungalow built of asbestos near the farm. This was a mile or more to the nearest bus stop, quite a hike with three children, so my mum felt very isolated.

Things looked up in 1979, though money was still short, when they were allocated a housing association house on a new estate in Chartham, a large village just outside Canterbury. Mum was delighted to be somewhere where there were people rather than just fields, and became a fixture of the village community for the rest of her life, later moving to the first and only house they bought, Swanhaven, in the heart of the village.

Mum was the Chartham village columnist for the Kentish Gazette for decades, paid 7p a line to report everything down to who got 3^rd place for potatoes at the cottage gardeners’ society exhibition. She played a leading role in the Friends of Chartham Primary School, helping organise a succession of Christmas and summer fetes. She ran summer holiday play sessions for local kids, sometimes in liaison with the librarians from Canterbury children’s library. Whilst not as involved in political life as me or her grandparents, she was a member of the Labour Party from about 1980 onwards, standing once for the parish council (she didn’t enjoy being a candidate) and for many years leafletting the entire village at election times. Her politics were ferociously left-wing – she was burning with anger about her own experience of coping on Family Credit top-ups in the Thatcher years, but also about poverty, injustice and racism wherever she saw it.

Mum’s biggest contribution to village life was to be part of the upbringing not just of her own three children but of two entire generations of Chartham children. This started with helping organise the Chartham Preschool Playgroup, in the days before areas like that had any LEA provided nursery provision. This eventually folded into a proper nursery class at the local primary school, and my mum worked as a classroom assistant from the 1990s until well into her 70s. She was adored by small children and loved working with them. She stayed at the school so long that eventually children she had looked after in the 1990s came back as parents with their own children twenty years later. She spread happiness and love to hundreds of children.

Mum was delighted to become a mother-in-law to my wife Linda and Sam’s wife Catherine. She welcomed them into her family and hosted some of the most glorious, deliciously catered and wine saturated dinners you can imagine. She was even more delighted when over the last 15 years, between her three children a total of five grandsons joined the tribe.

She adored them all and loved spending time with them, and they with her. She particularly played a crucial role in the upbringing of my sister’s son Casper. My sister and her son have been living with my mum and dad as my sister has a number of health problems, and mum has sacrificed more than we will ever know to provide them with care, support and love.

Mum was a loyal friend to dozens of people. She would handwrite letters – definitely not emails, which she refused to engage with – in her extremely distinctive italicised handwriting (a graphologist would have had a field day) to contacts she had kept since school and art college days. Her art college friend Denise, who she adored, would come to stay. Every minutiae of people’s lives in the village and beyond appeared to be a matter of passionate concern. If you were alone, bereaved or having a bad time, there was a place at the dinner table. No matter her own family stresses and tribulations, and there were many, she was always there for other people.

My mum wasn’t a person who found consolation in any faith, but she lived her life by very firm values about serving and caring for others, friendship, selflessness and love.

She hated the idea of getting old, and never conceded an inch to the aging process. In going suddenly, we’ve missed a couple of decades we thought we had left of her excellent company, but she will be forever remembered as about as youthful a 74 year-old as it is possible to be.

Thank you mum for everything you have done for us. We will always be in debt to you for your love, support and care. We love you and miss you already.

NEC Report - 11 February 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2021年2月13日 18:07:00 +0000

Although there have been the NEC Away Day and a special meeting to deal with the EHRC Action Plan, this was the first ordinary full NEC meeting I have attended since my election back onto the NEC in November.

Apparently, it was a better meeting that others in 2020 had been. The mind boggles about what they were like if this was a "better" one. Presumably, any improvement is down to the changed political balance. There is now a clear working majority that supports the leadership, making any votes that are forced performative displays of victimhood by the Hard Left for the benefit of their reports to the (rapidly dwindling based on the results of recent CLP AGMs) Momentum email list.

When I served on the NEC from 2010 to 2012 it was characterised by being a friendly, collegiate body, where people from across the spectrum of party opinion looked for issues where they could work together, treated each other respectfully, and were polite and positive towards the leadership and the General Secretary.

This longstanding culture has been broken and needs to be restored. I am assured by people who have served in the interim that the breakdown in good manners and professional behaviour is very recent, and that despite profound concerns about his leadership, moderate NEC members treated Jeremy Corbyn with respect and courtesy.

Now we have a situation where the majority on the NEC are behaving in a comradely, professional way and a minority are being relentlessly uncomradely.

The six and a half hours of the NEC meeting included large sections where the time of people of good will who are trying to make Labour electable was wasted in order for people who don’t want Keir to succeed to undermine him with a litany of negativity.

Time, because of what members choose to focus their questions on, is disproportionately spent on attack lines about confected internal cause celebres that excite the hyper-active, have already been extensively aired on social media and are of very little interest to the mass of party members let alone Labour or potentially Labour voters (whether Keir should appear next to our national flag, the end of the Community Organising Unit, suspensions for ignoring instructions about non-competent business, Jeremy Corbyn’s disciplinary case, something that Lord Falconer has said). Rather less time is spent making positive proposals or offering constructive scrutiny that might help the party staff with their immediate and huge task of rebuilding a party traumatised by the Corbyn era and winning the bumper lot of elections that are happening in May.

It is like having an opposition party inside the NEC meeting trying actively to damage the party. On occasion people were overtly personally rude as well.

I think this is a terrible waste. There are talented people from across the political spectrum on the NEC. If everyone played their role as team players we could achieve so much more, and in fact the left of the party would be far more likely to advance its agenda by being collegiate and constructive.

This is not a good use of Keir, Angela or David’s time, and their forbearance, dignity and calm in putting up with this nonsense is extraordinary, as is Margaret Beckett’s skill as chair.

Keir’s report was delivered from Heathrow where he had been meeting Unite union reps in solidarity with their dispute over fire and rehire. He outlined Labour’s approach to the Budget on 3 March and to the May elections, stressing that we want to "build forward" to a different, more equal future, rather than "build back" to the pre-Covid world as the Tories want. Keir said Labour will be fleshing out the detail of our practical "Recovery and Rebuild" policy proposals, which are in the three areas of health and wellbeing, the economy, and redistributing power.

Keir reported that Labour had forced Opposition Day debates on topics that were important to raise in Parliament and divided Tory MPs: fire and rehire, Universal Credit and Cladding.

In the Q&A I asked Keir to emulate the Biden campaign by consistently driving home the message about the need to sign up for postal votes.

Keir was on incredible form and dealt with all the questions, positive and negative, with great answers.

Angela Rayner’s report focused on campaigning but again there were silly attempts by the Hard Left to extract damaging answers, such as asking for foolhardy predictions about May’s elections. Have these people never heard of expectation management? I was pleased that Angela specifically picked up on my theme about postal voting and set out steps that are being taken.

David Evans read out a letter from the Forde Inquiry, saying they had had to pause publication of their report while the Information Commissioner’s Office conducted an investigation into the data breach associated with the leak that Forde was investigating. The report has already been delayed because the panel has conducted so many interviews and considered so many submissions. The letter has now been published on the Forde Inquiry website: https://www.fordeinquiry.org/forde-inquiry-update/

David also covered progress on the Organise to Win 2024 programme of organisational change, staff diversity, and the EHRC Action Plan, where he reported on creation of an Antisemitism Advisory Board (biographies here: https://labour.org.uk/antisemitism/action-plan/ ) and said training for staff and the NEC would be completed by 29 April.

On the suspensions for ignoring guidance about non-competent business about antisemitism there had been no blanket policy of suspensions, they had been on a case-by-case basis and were being resolved by Disputes Panel hearings. The key issue was that the EHRC Report had made the Labour Party legally responsible for the actions of its "agents" down to the level of councillors and branch and CLP officers. David said he would, after consulting the NEC, recast and reissue an updated set of guidance in order for CLPs to be able to frame discussions about antisemitism in a safe and inclusive way. He would also change the disciplinary process so that members could be issued with reminders of conduct and formal warnings without them having to be suspended.

I welcomed David’s proposed change to the disciplinary process as I don’t think it is fair for people breaching the rules in less serious cases to lose their right to hold office for months and eventually only get a written reprimand. But I made it clear that I supported the party having taken the action then available to it to stop uncontrolled debates about issues around antisemitism, which could have created flash points that would have caused a hostile environment for Jewish members and could have led to further legal and EHRC problems for the party. I said that many members had contacted me demanding the party take action to tackle the unpleasant culture in their CLPs and desperately wanted positive debates about policy and campaigning, not meeting after acrimonious meeting focused on the debate around antisemitism and the disciplinary process.

The membership report revealed we now have over 512,000 members, 19% of whom have joined since the start of 2020. I urged the party to work with affiliated unions to bring union members into full individual membership to redress the longstanding disproportionate bias in the party’s membership towards older middle class white male graduates and the London and South East regions.

We were given an update on the review of how the party makes policy, which will now move to a period of focussed engagement led by Angela, with rule changes to be proposed at Annual Conference. David said he was committed to there being a 2021 Annual Conference but Covid meant there were still two scenarios, a full conference and a socially distant one.

The most important item from my point of view was the update on the May elections, presented by the newly appointed Executive Director Elections & Field Delivery, Anna Hutchinson. This is a uniquely challenging double set of elections, with the added complication of Covid meaning that doorstep campaigning is unlikely to be possible and in-person voters will be told to wear a mask and even take their own pen or pencil! The party’s top priorities are maximising the number of postal voters, which we are describing as "early voters" as postal voting has connotations of being for older people only; and using the newly upgraded Dialogue phone canvassing. It was fantastic to hear that as much canvassing is now being done via Dialogue as was being done conventionally pre-lockdown. I was pleased that Anna responded positively to my suggestion of greater use of twinning and targeting of key marginal areas given that this is particularly easy when almost all the work is being done by phone. She said the party will be pushing a message to CLPs that every third Dialogue session they run should be in support of a marginal area.

We agreed that in Sandwell, where there has been a lot of local infighting (largely unrelated to national left vs. right conflicts), to ensure the council candidate selections are run fairly they should be untaken by panels consisting of regional appointees, and we added two of our own NEC colleagues, Nick Forbes and James Asser, to the panel line-ups.

A working group to come up with a model for re-establishing a student wing of the Labour Party was agreed. I was very pleased to be appointed to serve on this as I am a former National Secretary of Labour Students.

We agreed that overseas members in the Labour International CLP should be allowed to pay the concessionary membership fee if they are unwaged, when previously all overseas members had been charged the full rate.

Finally, we agreed to sign up the Labour Party to the employer aspects of the Armed Forces Covenant.

Between the NEC Away Day on 24 November and this meeting I also participated in the following other meetings. It is not my intention usually to report in detail on sub-committee meetings because when I was on the NEC before we were under instruction that reports should only be on full meetings not committees, and in the case of Disputes Panels the proceedings are confidential:

· Training for serving on Sexual Harassment disciplinary panels – 3 December and 2 February

· Two Disputes Panel hearings.

· Equalities Committee meeting on EHRC Action Plan – 4 December – this elected James Asser as the new committee Chair.

· Special full NEC meeting on the EHRC Action Plan – 7 December

· Development Fund Panel – 10 December – this panel allocates grants to CLPs

· Equalities Committee – 14 January – this included items on the EHRC Action Plan, Women’s Conference, tackling anti-GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) racism, and BAME working group.

· Disputes Panel – 21 January – this elected Shabana Mahmood as the new Panel Chair and received statistics on total numbers of cases being resolved etc.

· Organisation Committee – 21 January – this elected Wendy Nichols as the new committee Chair. I was elected to the working group on the parliamentary boundary review, and as the NEC link member for Labour International CLP. Items considered included the Liverpool Mayor candidate selection process, boundary review, ensuring high quality candidates, election of Young Labour equalities positions, membership data access and use for CLP officers.

· I have also been elected to the NPF Health and Social Care Policy Commission, but this has not met yet.

NEC Report - 24 November 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2020年11月25日 15:50:00 +0000

Yesterday was my first NEC meeting after an eight-year gap.

I wanted to give you a quick report back so that you can be confident all of us elected on the Labour to Win ticket are doing the job of representing you that you would expect.

I think I ought to have anticipated a fraught start to the meeting when outgoing Chair Andi Fox congratulated a list of newly elected list of members and perhaps accidentally, perhaps on purpose, left out my name, and then had to be reminded to grudgingly add it.

Within minutes we were into an explosive row about who should be NEC Chair. This matters, it isn’t just about effective chairing of often contentious meetings, the Chair can rule out agenda items and only be overturned on this by a two thirds majority (which supporters of the leadership don’t have, we only have a simple majority), and the Chair and Vice-Chair sit on the extremely powerful NEC Officers group, which makes urgent decisions between NEC meetings. A hostile Chair using their role negatively could really damage Keir Starmer’s ability to lead Labour effectively.

The Hard Left argued that the outgoing NEC Vice-Chair Ian Murray (from the Fire Brigades Union, not the Scottish MP of the same name) was next in line to be chair.

We argued that the principle of seniority should be restored, which had been Labour’s custom and practice for four decades until broken by the Hard Left in 2017. This meant that we nominated Margaret Beckett for Chair as the longest-serving NEC member. She first joined the NEC in 1980, whereas Ian Murray has only been on the NEC about three years.

At this point Howard Beckett from Unite and Laura Pidcock attacked Keir and the General Secretary for "factionalism" and led a virtual walkout (it was a Zoom meeting) of 13 Hard Left NEC members.

In my first intervention I condemned this extraordinary behaviour. The disrespectful and personalised attacks on Keir and David Evans and the childish petulance of the walkout really shocked me, as when I had previously served on the NEC from 2010-2012 it had been a very comradely and collegiate body. Apparently this rude and aggressive behaviour only started in April when Keir became leader. The people who walked out failed their own supporters by leaving them voiceless in the rest of the meeting. This isn’t the serious approach to internal governance that a potential party of government needs to demonstrate, particularly when under scrutiny from the EHRC.

The rest of the eight-hour meeting was quorate, friendly, constructive, and brilliantly chaired by Margaret Beckett, who we went on to elect nem con once the kerfuffle from their stunt had died down. Alice Perry was also elected nem con as Vice-Chair. Congratulations to them both. They will bring much needed calm and experienced leadership to the NEC. Margaret is an iconic figure as Labour’s first woman Deputy Leader, Acting Leader and Foreign Secretary, who brings huge gravitas to the role of Chair.

During the formal part of the meeting we agreed a new NEC Code of Conduct (clearly behaviour of members needs to improve); a process for dealing with CLP motions sent to us; an important review of Safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults who participate in the Labour Party; and gave the go ahead for an online Labour Women’s Conference from 25-27 June 2021, which will elect the National Labour Party Women’s Committee.

In the afternoon we had our "Away Day" where staff presented to us and we brainstormed ideas around three themes; Elections 2021, Engaging our Membership under Covid, and Effective Governance. We learned that Labour now has 540,000 members, a historically very high total.

We heard reports from both Keir and Angela Rayner. Keir answered questions on the forthcoming Brexit deal vote, devolution, public sector pay, Islamophobia (the party is drawing up an action plan to tackle it), local government funding, and shop workers.

After an unnecessarily and wholly inappropriately disrupted start this felt like a good beginning for the new NEC with its new pro-leadership working majority. I’m honoured that your votes have allowed me to serve on the NEC and help with the big task of repairing the party.

Labour NEC Elections - state of the race

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2020年9月14日 16:14:00 +0000

According to the CLP nominations so far, I'm currently 10th in the race for the 9 CLP reps on the NEC, which is an exciting place to be!

The deadline for CLPs to nominate NEC candidates is fast approaching on the 27th September.

There are over 200 CLPs with nomination meetings scheduled in the next two weeks.

How is the battle for nominations going so far?

The headline figures are that Momentum are ahead, but not by an insurmountable margin given there are hundreds of CLPs still to nominate. Labour to Win candidates already have more nominations than in 2018, with two weeks to go, and Momentum have lost many of the CLPs they won then. Here are the numbers from Friday, when 120 CLPs in total had nominated:

Laura Pidcock Momentum 83 CLPs

Ann Black Open Labour 81

Yasmine Dar Momentum 68

Gemma Bolton Momentum 67

Mish Rahman Momentum 65

Johanna Baxter Labour to Win 61

Nadia Jama Momentum 60

Gurinder Singh Josan Labour to Win 59

Ann Henderson Momentum 56

Luke Akehurst Labour to Win 45

Theresa Griffin Tribune 38

Jermain Jackman Open Labour 36

Michael Payne Labour to Win 35

Terry Paul Labour to Win 31

Shama Tatler Labour to Win 30

Paula Sherriff Tribune 25

Crispin Flintoff Independent 16

Roger Silverman Labour Left Alliance 14

Vince Maple Independent 12

Liz McInnes Tribune 11

Cameron Mitchell Independent 11

Alex Beverley Independent 11

Another 12 candidates also have the required 5 nominations to get on the ballot.

Things to bear in mind:

· The final ballot is by Single Transferable Vote so it will award seats roughly proportionately between the factions – the days of one grouping taking all nine seats are gone.

· Any increase in our representation from the 2 of 9 seats we already hold strengthens the mainstream majority on the NEC as a whole.

· Over 100,000 new members who joined the party to vote for Keir, Lisa or Jess didn’t get a vote in the February NEC by-elections that saw Gurinder and Johanna narrowly win. They can now vote. And the Hard Left keep complaining that many of their supporters have quit the party ...

· With every week of nominations, our position has got stronger compared to Momentum’s.

· Over 80% of the CLPs nominating Labour to Win candidates are gains we didn't win in 2018.

· We are doing best in CLPs with All Member Meetings where the new members can vote, and Momentum are mainly holding on where there is a delegate GC system – AGM cancellations due to the General Election and COVID mean some GC delegates were elected at the height of Corbynism in 2018.

· We are doing best in the CLPs with the largest membership that will have the most voting members in the final ballot while many of Momentum’s nominations come from small CLPs.

Unite Executive Council Elections 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Akehurst) — 2020年5月23日 17:59:00 +0000

If you are a Unite union member you will get a ballot for the Executive Council elections if there are contested elections in your region and/or industrial sector.

They must be returned by 12 noon on Thursday 18th June 2020.

Members who have not received a ballot paper by Monday 8th June 2020 should contact the ballot enquiry service on 0800 783 3856 (0818 333 155 from the Republic of Ireland or Gibraltar).

Details of candidates are here: https://secure.cesvotes.com/V3-0-0/unitenominates2020/en/home?bbp=6942&x=-1

I have seen the following list of suggestions circulated for who members should vote for if they want the union to change direction:

Ireland
Noel Gibson
Marie Casey

North East Yorkshire and Humberside Region
Gary Andrews

Scotland
Grieg McArthur
Helen McFarlane

South East Region
Dominic Rothwell

Wales
Kerry Owens

West Midlands Region
Stuart Hedley

Engineering, Manufacturing and Steel
Gary Buchan

Food, Drink and Agriculture
Neelam Verma
Matt Gould

Finance and Legal
Jacob Goddard
Fiona Tatem

Health
Steve Thompson
Tracey Osment

Local Authorities
Lisa Colquhoun
Kevin Woods

Passenger Transport
Nigel Atkinson
Simon Rosenthal

Road Transport Commercial, Warehousing and Logistics
Mick Casey
Paul Shedd

Service Industries
Howard Percival

Unite Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians
Jamie Bramwell
Stuart Grice

National Black and Asian Ethnic Minority Members’ Constituency
Raffiq Moussa